I !j ! I 



■'■■'' 



iiiiawl 



THE 



EARLY YEARS 



O* 



CHRISTIANITY. 






Br E. DE PRESSENSE, D.D., 

A.UTH0B OF " JESUS CHEIST : HIS TIMES, LIPE, AND WOBK.* 



TRANSLATED BY ANNIE HARWOOD. 



THE MAKTYKS AND APOLOGISTS. 



NEW YOEK: 
NELSON & PHILLIPS. 

CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WALDEX. 






\ u 






/* 

^ 



PREFACE. 



This Volume, like the preceding, has been specially 
prepared for the English Edition. Divided into three 
sections, it yet forms one whole, for its one theme is the 
great conflict of Primitive Christianity with Paganism. 

The first section gives the narrative of the missions 
and persecutions of the Church ; the second treats of 
its most illustrious representatives, and brings out their 
distinctive characteristics ; it is entitled " The Fathers 
of the Church of the Second and Third Centuries." 
The third section describes the great controversial 
conflict of Christianity, and contains a complete outline 
of the Apology of the Early Church. 

The Volume which is to follow will have for its sub- 
ject Heresy and the Faith ; and the work will conclude 
with the exposition of the religious and ecclesiastical 
life of that age of fervour and of freedom. 

The Author has spared no labour over this book, 
and has uniformly derived his statements from the 
original sources. 

He esteems it an honour to see his work presented 
to the religious public in an English translation 
executed with so much care and ability. 

Edmond de Pressense. 
Paris, 1870. 



NOTE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS. 



The five volumes from the pen of Pressens£, including 
his " Life of Christ " and his " Early Years of 
Christianity," are to form a complete history of the ori- 
gin and progress of our religion from the advent of the 
Saviour to the establishment of Christianity as the re- 
ligion of the Roman Empire under Constantine. As a 
work equally suited to the scholar and the popular reader, 
the entire series is perhaps without a rival. The learned 
author has drawn his narration from the original sources. 
His work is, for that reason, quoted with profound respect 
by the standard writers of our day. At the same time 
his style is so free, fresh, and eloquent, his criticisms are* 
so redolent of deep and genuine sympathy with the 
Christian cause, with its heroes, martyrs, and defenders, 
and his doctrinal prepossessions are so thoroughly in har 
mony with both the ancient and modern evangelical 
views, that we know no history of Early Christianity so 
worthy to be spread broadcast among the American 
people. 

Of the series of Early Years of Christianity the topics 
of the four volumes are as follows : I. Apostolic Era, 
which has already been issued from our press ; II. Mar- 
tyrs and Apologists, which is now presented to the 
reader ; III. Doctrines and Heresies ; and IV. The 
Church Worship and Christian Life. These can be 
obtained by the purchaser either as the volumes of a 
series or as separate books. 



CONTENTS, 



TBoofe $ml 

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 
CHAPTER I. 



PAGB 



The Conquests of the Church I 

CHAPTER II. 

General Character of the Persecutions of the Second and 

Third Centuries , 67 

CHAPTER III. 
The Church and the Empire from A.D. 98 to A.D. 190 98 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Church of the Empire, from the commencement of the 

Third Century to Constantine 137 

TBoofe ©econtu 

THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH IN THE SECOND 
AND THIRD CENTURIES. 

CHAPTER I. 
The Fathers of the Church in the Second Century 216 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER II. 

PAGE 

The Fathers of the Eastern Church, from the end of the Second 

Century to the Time of Constantine 261 

CHAPTER III. 

The Fathers of the Western Church, from Commodus to 

Constantine 360 



ISook CfritO, 



THE ATTACK AND DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANTY IN 
THE DOMAIN OF CONTROVERSY. 

CHAPTER I. 
The Attack 440 

CHAPTER II. 
The Defence or Apology of the Christian Faith 526 



NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS 629 

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 641 

INDEX OF AUTHORS, &c 648 



THE 

EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
BOOK FIRST. 

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 
CHAPTER I. 

THE CONQUESTS OF THE CHURCH.* 

§ I. Character and Method of early Christian Missions. 

We have described the rapid growth of Christianity 
in its infancy ; we have recorded that steady forward 
march of the Church which no obstacle could impede, 
no danger daunt. Under the leadership of its invisible 
Head, it went forth without trembling, to meet adver- 
saries at once skilful and strong, and as numerous as 
formidable — to encounter, in fact, all the recognised 
lords of the world, its princes and priests, its philo- 
sophers and artists. Every conflict became a victory, 
and the only effect of persecution was to extend the 

* In addition to the original sources and the great ecclesiastical 
histories already mentioned, we shall quote from Mosheim, '' De 
Rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum Magnum," pp. 203-448 ; 
Fabricius, " Salutaris lux Evangelii toto orbi per divinam gratiam 
exoriens ;" " Histoire Generale de l'Etablissement du Christianisme," 
translated from the German of C. G. Blumhardt, by A. Bost, vol. I. 



2 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

missionary field of the Church, to give greater weight 
to its testimony, and to command for it a wider hear- 
ing. We have seen the Church at Jerusalem, formed 
but of yesterday, and still dimly enlightened on more 
than one point, making head against the fiercest storm, 
and finding, in the enforced dispersion of its members, a 
most valuable means of propagating the faith. The 
barrier raised by Jewish prejudice between the Church 
and the pagan world falls at the voice of St. Paul, and 
in the first impulse of their new-born zeal, its emis- 
saries at once go far and wide over the vast field 
thus opened to Christian labour. The Gospel is spread 
over the whole of Asia Minor ; it reaches the borders of 
India, penetrates the deserts of Arabia, and touches the 
heart of Egyptian Africa. The great Apostle and his 
companions carry it into Greece — into the great centres 
of ancient civilisation. It echoes in the very capital of 
the empire. Everywhere flourishing Churches flame 
like beacons through the darkness of pagan night. In 
the period which follows, the Church retraces its steps 
over this vast field, deepening the furrows and scatter- 
ing the seed more widely. Asia Minor, in particular, 
is made to feel the power of Christianity under the 
influence of those great bishops, who, like Polycarp and 
Ignatius, seal a heroic ministry with a martyr's death. 

In the period which we are now approaching, and 
which comprehends the second and third centuries 
of our era, this expansive movement goes on yet more 
rapidly and irresistibly. Christianity extends its con- 
quests to the utmost limits of the Roman Empire, and. 
at several points even passes beyond it. Although a 
certain exaggeration is no doubt apparent in the lan- 
guage of the apologists of the Church, who seek to 
demonstrate the truth of the Gospel by the greatness 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 3 

of its success, it is yet abundantly evident from their 
writings that those successes were real, and very 
remarkable. "There is not," says Justin Martyr, "a 
single race of men, barbarians, Greeks, or by whatever 
name they may be called, warlike or nomadic, home- 
less or dwelling in tents, or leading a pastoral life, 
among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered 
in the name of Jesus the crucified, to the Father and 
Creator of all things."* Irenseus writes subsequently : 
" Such is the common faith and tradition of the Churches 
of Germany, Iberia, and of the Celts, as well as of 
those of the East, of Egypt, of Libya, and of the centre 
o£ the world. "t Tertullian, with his usual fervour, 
exclaims : " In whom have all the nations believed, but 
in the Christ who is already come ? In Him believe 
the Parthians, the Medes, the Elamites, the dwellers 
in Mesopotamia, in Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, in 
Pontus, and Asia, in Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the 
parts of Libya beyond Cyrene, inhabitants of Rome, 
Jews, and proselytes. This is the faith of the several 
tribes of the Getulians, the Moors, the Spaniards, and 
the various nations of Gaul. The parts of Britain in- 
accessible to the Romans, but subject to Jesus Christ, 
hold the same faith, as do also the Sarmatians, the 
Dacians, the Germans, the Scythians, and many other 
nations in provinces and islands unknown to us, and 
which we must fail to enumerate."! 

Making large allowance for the rhetorical colouring 

* OvSe ev fap oXcjg scrrl to yevog dvOpwTruv kv olg fxij dia tov ovofxarog 
tov GravpioQkvTog 'Irjaov evxai icai thxapiariai. (Justin Martyr, " Dial, 
cum Tryph.," p. 345. Paris edition, 1636.) • 

t Irenaeus, " Contr. Haeres.," I., 3. (Feuardentius edition.) 
I " Etiam Getulorum varietates, et Maurorum multi fines, His- 
paniarum omnes termini etGalliarum diversae nationes, et Sarma- 
torum, Dacorum et Germanorum et Scytharum . . " (Tertullian, 
"Adv. Judaeos," c. vii.) 



4 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of such assertions, it is yet impossible to question that 
they attest a truly marvellous diffusion of the new 
religion. Nor is it only the arena of missionary 
activity which is thus indefinitely enlarged ; the sphere 
is occupied, and the missionary work is no less admir- 
able, regarded from within than from without. " We 
are but of yesterday," says this same Tertullian in a 
passage which has become classical, " and lo ! we fill the 
whole empire, — your cities, your islands, your fortresses, 
your municipalities, your councils, nay, even the camp, 
the tribune, the decury, the palace, the senate, the 
forum."* 

This rapid survey of the conquests of Christianity at 
this period will not suffice. We shall need to pass 
under review in detail the origin of the principal 
Churches of the East and West, of those which became 
either important centres of the faith, or the advanced 
posts of new beliefs. We must first inquire, however, 
by what means these great successes were obtained, 
what were the obstacles, and what the aids to early 
missionary activity. t 

We shall not dwell again on that which we have 
already observed — the reproach brought upon Chris- 
tianity by the lowliness of its origin, the poverty of its 
apostles, and the simplicity of its worship. We shall 
have occasion more than once to allude to this, when 
setting forth the defence presented in its name by its 
apologists. Sprung out of Judaea, born of a haughty 
and detested people, who met the scorn of*the world 
with ft a yet more bitter scorn, Christianity, while it was 

# " Hesterni sumus et vestras omnes implevimus urbes, insulas, 
castella, municipia, conciliabula, castra ipsa, tribus, decurias, pala- 
tium, senatum, forum." (Tertullian, " Apol.," c. xxxvii.) 

t See on this point Neander's " Church History," vol. I. pp. 60-72. 
Eng. Trans., Bohn's Ed., vol. I. pp. 95-108. 



BOOK I.— CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 5 

rejected and reviled by the Jews, shared nevertheless 
in the odium attached to Judaism. It was thus in the 
anomalous position of bearing the reproach of the 
synagogue as if identified with it, while at the same 
time it found in the synagogue its most malignant and 
implacable foe. It is true that as we advance in the 
history of the Church, we shall find this misconception 
gradually dispelled ; but it was of much longer duration 
than could have been at first supposed. The simplicity 
of the Christian worship — so remarkable at this period, 
when it had cast off the Jewish ritual, and had not, as 
yet, sought any new ceremonial ; the adoration of the 
invisible without symbolic aid ; the absence of any 
temples — a fact not to be ascribed solely to the 
danger of persecution, but which represented a prin- 
ciple ; the bold spirituality, which grasped the idea 
of worship in spirit and in truth as so grand a reality ; 
all these characteristics of the new religion were of a 
nature to scandalise and irritate, by the force of con- 
trast, a world given to idolatry. To the votaries of 
a materialistic religion, who recognise only the gods 
that walk before men's eyes, spirituality is atheism. 
Unable to rise to the spiritual, the simplest method 
is to deny it. For such souls, where there is no 
idol, there is no God. It was natural then that the 
Christians should be classed among the impious, by the 
worshippers of Jupiter and Venus. We have already 
mentioned the infamous calumnies which attempted to 
brand the worship of the Church by travestying its most 
sacred mysteries. We shall presently see how these 
false accusations were flung back, by the defenders of 
the Church, with words of burning eloquence, in the 
face ot the adversaries and their feeble gods. 

But the grand obstacle to Christian missions was the 



b THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

universal moral corruption, which was ever developing 
itself in new forms in a world, the very foundations of 
which were unsound. With no fixed beliefs, with no 
faith in the future, the society of that age abandoned 
itself to a materialism as daring as it was desperate. 
Nothing could be more corrupting to the spirit than 
this purely sensuous life, facilitated by all the resources 
of a powerful and refined society, to which nothing was 
wanting but fixed principles and a steadfast purpose. 
To secure diversion in the narrow span between birth 
and death, to extract the largest possible amount of 
enjoyment from a precarious existence, this is the 
great aim of such a life ; the feverish restlessness which 
accompanies it only gives an added stimulus to volup- 
tuous excess. We have endeavoured to describe the 
fatal fascination to which decrepit paganism yielded at 
the commencement of our era. The writers of the 
second and third centuries show us how the life of the 
senses had become yet more completely dominant. 
The pagan, according to the powerful language of 
Clement of Alexandria, drank in voluptuousness through 
every sense.* Voluptuousness adorned his dwelling 
with unchaste images, it inspired the syren music 
of his feasts, it reigned supreme in the theatre. It 
mingled with the blood in his veins. "Like the syren 
of the Odyssey," says Clement in another place, "it 
sends forth a seductive sound ; but the waters on to 
which it lures the listener flow over hidden fire. The 
indulgence of sensuality has become universal, and its 
effect is to destroy the man and keep him from the 
truth." t "You hear that voice," again he exclaims ; 

* Clement of Alexandria, u Protrept.," c. iv. § 61. 
f *Ayx ei T °v avOpixJwov, rr\q a\r]6tiag a.Ttorp'i.'Kei. (Clement of Alex- 
andria, "Protrept.," c. xii. § 116.) 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 7 

" O mariner, you hear it ; and it pleases you.* Pass 
away from it; shut your ears against its deathful music. 
If you will, you may escape, only bind yourself to 
the Saving raft."t But this raft was the cross — the cross 
which represented the voluntary self-sacrifice of the 
Christian, no less than that of the Redeemer. This 
alone reveals what a gulf the voluptuous pagan had to 
cross, before he could enroll himself beneath such a 
standard. 

There was yet another form of the voluptuous, 
more refined than the merely sensual, which alienated 
many minds from Christianity. This was that extrava- 
gant love of beauty of form, which had always dis- 
tinguished the Hellenic race, and which it had imparted 
to the degenerate Romans. In an age of decadence, 
the form of the idea is esteemed far more highly than 
the idea itself. The surfeited soul, like the surfeited 
palate, craves the piquant, the highly dressed. Sim- 
plicity of expression excites only contempt, and the 
noblest thoughts pass unheeded unless surcharged with 
ornament. The Fathers of the Church have repeatedly 
pointed out this intellectual epicurism, as one of the 
great obstacles to the progress of Christianity. The 
noble language of the pagan philosophers seemed to 
Justin Martyr a bait, which would decoy many souls to 
death.]; Celsus, the great opponent of Christianity, 
heaps his most biting sarcasms on the vulgarity of the 
form, by which, according to him, truth is degraded in 
the Gospel ; on the incorrectness and barbarism of the 
style of the sacred writings, and on their want of 

* "E7raivei<re, w vavra. (Clement of Alexandria, " Protrept," 
C. xii. § 1 16.) t TV ZvXy 7rpo(rdtdei.ievoQ. (Ibid.) 

X "Qcnrep SeXeap rrjv evyXwTTiav. (Justin, " Ad. Graec. Cohortatio," 
P. 44) 



8 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

logical force. While in order to sustain his argument 
he exaggerates the somewhat bald simplicity of the apos- 
tolic writings, he yet faithfully represents the natural 
repugnance of the Hellenic race to a book, which, 
like the lowly Redeemer whom it revealed to the world, 
made no pretence to the glory or excellency of human 
wisdom. Greece had drunk draughts too intoxicating 
to appreciate the purity of the living water. Those 
only who were thirsting for pardon and peace, drew 
near to the Divine fountain. It had no charm for the 
epicureans of philosophy and art. 

To these general causes of aversion to Christianity 
may be added others, which were peculiar to the age 
of which we are about to speak. We shall find the 
paganism of the second and third centuries of our era, 
assuming more and more a character of gloomy and 
fierce fanaticism. A desperate effort was unquestion- 
ably made at this period to revive old religious beliefs. 
The incredulity which at one time, as we have noted, 
came in like a flood, could not long maintain its ground 
against the power of superstition. Superstition spreads 
from class to class, and from the lowest stratum of the 
ignorant populace, it rises to the elevated sphere where 
philosophy and science have long reigned alone. Phi- 
losophers and lettered men cannot resist the stream. 
Alexandria becomes the centre of this reaction of 
paganism. It is not certain old religious forms which 
are revived; it is the old religion of the old world 
surviving in its essence the decay of its various embodi- 
ments. Nature becomes the supreme object of worship — 
Nature, the mysterious Isis, before whom for so many 
ages the whole East has bowed down. Rising above 
Hellenic humanism to the sublime pantheism of India, 
borrowing its asceticism and mysticism to set in the 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 9 

scale against Christian piety, the pagan reaction 
succeeds in baffling the aspirations of more than one 
noble soul. In its popular form it misleads the people 
by mere trickery. It inspires unlimited confidence in 
the hidden forces of nature, and makes the multitude 
more and more the dupe of magicians, who gratify the 
taste for the marvellous, and promise deliverance from 
physical evils without demanding any moral reforma- 
tion. Magic opposes its false miracles to the true 
miracles of Christianity, and thus holds the many 
enchained at the foot of those very altars, which, a 
century before, seemed to totter at the mere touch of a 
new faith. This religion without morality, which 
gratifies all the evil inclinations, while it frustrates all 
the true instincts of man's nature, will resist Chris- 
tianity with weapons worthy of itself. It will stir up 
the fierce passions of the multitude, and lash them into 
blind and frenzied fury. It will stimulate that thirst 
for blood, which seizes men as it does savage beasts when 
they have once tasted it ; it will feed, by the cruel sports 
of the amphitheatre, the fierce delight in human agony. 

Christianity had, as we know, powerful influences to 
bring to bear on these obstacles, apart from the in- 
trinsic force of truth. 

The element of strangeness, of absolute novelty which 
it presented in a state of society so profoundly corrupt, 
made it the rallying point of sympathies as strong as 
were the hostile feelings it awakened ; while the very 
opposition which it encountered served to sustain its 
severe morality, and to preserve it from the enervation 
of compromise. It thus retained its originality, and its 
sublime ideal gleamed in lofty purity above the encom- 
passing darkness. It seemed still like one coming up 
out oi the wilderness. The sharp contrast between the 

2 



10 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Church and the whole life around it, could scarcely 
fail to arrest the attention of the most thoughtless. 
The Church might be spoken 'against, it could hardly 
be despised; and souls, wearied with the vices of 
paganism, naturally fled, to lay hold of this new hope. 
The Church was the city of refuge, built upon a hill, 
with gates open to all, in whom there had arisen a 
thirst after the divine. Whether in hatred or in love, 
all eyes were drawn towards it by its moral elevation ; 
and the very hatred of its enemies became of service 
to it, by calling into demonstration the power of its 
faith. The steadfast witness of the Church — might 
we not rather say its martyrdom — during three centuries, 
brought to light an assurance so immoveable of the 
possession of the truth, that souls, weary of doubt, and 
craving after a settled belief, were irresistibly attracted 
by it. Hence that eloquence of the martyr's death of 
which Tertullian speaks. We shall see how powerful 
was the apology of the circus and the stake through- 
out the whole of this period, especially with the sublime 
commentary added by the great defenders of the faith. 
In the resignation of an innocent victim there is ever 
a mysterious attraction. The meekness of the martyr's 
gaze is more terrible to bear than the flashes of hatred 
or the fire of wrath. If the cross, presented to the adora- 
tion of the world, was one of the great stumbling-blocks 
of primitive Christianity, it was also one of its mightiest 
influences. The dying God won from men's hearts that 
which had been withheld from the awful God of Sinai ; 
and the Church achieved its most glorious victories in 
the days of its most complete self-sacrifice. To use the 
figure of Justin Martyr, it was like a vine which is the 
more fruitful the more it bleeds under the pruning knife.* 
* Justin Martyr, " Dial, cum Tryph.," p. 337. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. II 

If suffering was thus a powerful argument advancing 
the cause of Christianity, the joy of the Christians — 
their pure and lively joy in having found the truth — 
pleaded no less effectually. Clement of Alexandria, 
speaking of this blessed illumination of conversion as 
set forth in baptism, says : " We are like those who 
awake out of a deep sleep, or rather, like those from 
whose eyes a film has fallen. They see all things 
clearly, not because there is more light without (over 
which they have no control), but because from their 
own vision the darkening veil is gone. The eye of our 
souls has become strong and clear ; the Holy Ghost 
comes down upon us, and we discern the things which 
are of God."* Such joy could not be hidden in the 
heart, and the famous "Eureka" of Archimedes, applied 
to the grandest of truths, sounded from end to end of 
the empire, wherever the light of the Gospel had pene- 
trated. This lively joy, awakened by the discovery of 
truth, is expressed with great beauty in one of the 
symbolic representations, found in the catacombs or on 
the tombs of the early Christians. It depicts the rock 
smitten by Moses, suddenly opening and sending forth 
a stream of pure water, which flows over the desert 
sands. The painting is rude, but there is an indescrib- 
able beauty in the expression of the Israelites rushing 
to the fountain. Every feature bespeaks holy eagerness, 
unutterable joy, and they drink in long draughts, that 
which is indeed to them the water of life. The symbol is 
easy of interpretation. The first Christians sought thus 
to set forth the joy unspeakable of having seen the 
fountain of divine life opened in a desert, a thousand 
times more waste and arid than that crossed by the 

* "Q(77Tf|0 ol rbv i<7rvov o.7ro(Tei(T(l fxivoi evQewg typrjyopaaiv. (Clement 
of Alexandria, " Paedagog.," book I. c. vi. § 28.) 



13 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Israelites. The deep thirst of their souls, and the glad- 
ness realised, equalling and surpassing all that they had 
suffered — all this is conveyed in these rude paintings 
and sculptures, with a freshness and force which make 
them precious records of the faith of the first centuries. 
They do more than many learned dissertations to 
explain the rapid spread of Christianity in primitive 
times. 

In spite of all the obstacles we have enumerated, 
Christian missions found more than one element of 
support in the condition of men's minds in that age of 
decadence. The reaction in favour of paganism was 
not the only current carrying men along. Many 
thoughtful minds estimated it at its true value, and 
wearied of creeds so full of emptiness, showed them- 
selves disposed to accept Christianity. Such a disposi- 
tion of mind was not confined to the higher classes; 
unlettered men and women, the poor, and all those who 
were placed under the ban of the old society, all those 
too who were bowed down under the burden of its vices, 
felt drawn towards the Church ; and it was one of the 
great elements of power in the new religion that it 
addressed itself specially to such, and offered to them a 
doctrine so simple as to be within the reach of all. Its 
very motto might have been those touching words of 
the Master, ''Suffer the little ones to come unto me." 
The adaptation of Christianity to the popular mind, 
with which it was bitterly reproached by pagan philo- 
sophers accustomed to close the doors ol their schools 
against the profanum vulgus, gave it access to the 
humblest quarters. " We boldly avow," said Origen, 
" that it is our design to educate all men in the school 
of the Divine Word, so that the youngest may find 
instruction suited to them, and the very slave may 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 13 

learn how, in receiving freedom of the soul, he may be 
made free indeed. We Christians hold ourselves debtors 
alike to the Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and to 
the unwise. It is our aim, that every creature gifted 
with reason may be healed by the virtue of the Word, 
and be brought into friendship with God."* " Not 
only the rich," says Tatian, " but the poor are found 
among the scholars of our philosophy, and we ask 
nothing at their hands. We admit as hearers all who 
are willing to come — even women old and young. Our 
modest maidens talk of divine things as they. turn the 
spinning wheel. "t 

It naturally follows from the fact that the new 
religion thus addressed itself especially to the poor and 
the ignorant, that the spoken word should occupy a 
more important place than the written, in the history of 
early missions. That it did so is evident from the 
declaration of Irenaeus, that many barbarous tribes 
have salvation written in their heart, but without ink 
or paper.J These barbarous tribes were not all beyond 
the bounds of the empire. Copies of the Holy Scriptures 
were at this time rare and costly, inaccessible therefore 
to the unlettered classes of society. Once admitted 
into the Church, the poorest could indeed hear the 
Scriptures read ; but the truth first reached them in 
the form of animated narrative or fervent appeal. It is 
easy to conceive how many of the errors which became 
current in the stream of oral tradition may have 
been transmitted to the new converts, especially 

* Ol Trap r'ljMV irpeafipvovTEg rbv xpiGriaviGixov licavojg (pacnv ocpeiXerai 
tlvai EWrjtJi kcl'i /3apj3apoig, oocpoig tcai avofjroig. (Origen, " Contr. 
Cels.," III., c. liv.) f Tatian, "Contr. Grascos," pp. 167, 168. 

X " Multae gentes Barbarorum sine charta et atramento scriptam 
habentes per Spiritum in cordibus suis salutem." (Irenasus, " Contr. 
Haeres.," III. p. 4.) 



14 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY, 

those of the lower classes, through the same medium 
which conveyed to them the grand truths of Chris- 
tianity. 

It was chiefly among the ignorant and the common 
people that the artifices of the magicians found dupes. 
We see from the romance of Apuleius how much credit 
the magicians had among the people. In opposition to 
their false miracles, the Church could show miracles 
which were true, and supernatural events such as had 
signalised the first days of missions were still repeated, 
though with less and less frequency. The clear and 
unanimous testimony of the Fathers of the third and 
fourth centuries, leaves no room to doubt the con- 
tinuance of miraculous power in the Church of that 
period. Irenseus and Tertullian speak of miraculous 
cures effected by Christians, and even of persons being 
raised from the dead. " That some cast out devils," 
says Irenseus, " is a matter that cannot be called in 
question, since it is attested by the experience of those 
who have been thus delivered, and are now in the 
Church. Others have the gift of foretelling the future, 
see visions, and speak prophetic words ; others effect 
cures by laying their hands on the sick."* " Often," 
says the same Father, " the life of a man has been 
granted to the prayers of the faithful." t 

Tertullian relates that Septimus Severus was healed 
of a serious disease by a Christian, who, following the 
practical directions of James, had prayed over him, 
anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord ; and 
the grateful emperor gave him a home in the palace to 
the end of his life. J Origen mentions miraculous cures 

* Irenaeus, " Contr. Haeres.," II. p $7- 
f 'ExapiaQt] 6 avQpi»irog ralq evxalg rwv ayiwv. (Ibid. II. p 31.) 

% Tertullian, " Ad Scapulam," c. iv. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 15 

wrought in the Church of his time. He says : " There 
are still among Christians, traces of that Holy Spirit 
who appeared in the form of a dove. They cast out 
devils, heal the sick, and, subject to the good pleasure 
of the Word, foresee the future."* 

Thus the continuance of miracles in the Church of 
the first three centuries is guaranteed by the most 
authentic tradition. To those who admit the super- 
natural element in Christianity, the fact presents 
nothing abnormal. There was no deep gulf placed 
between the apostolic and following ages. The first 
era of the Church did not end with a sharp line of 
demarcation ; miracles did not cease with the last of 
the apostles. They were perpetuated for the very 
simple reason, that the circumstances which had called 
for them remained the same. They were designed to 
mark, in a visible manner, and by an impressive symbol, 
the extraordinary and supernatural character of Chris- 
tianity ; they were specially appropiiate to the period 
of the Church's creation and formation, and had an 
important purpose yet to fulfil in the terrible struggle 
of the second and third centuries — that great crisis of 
the moral world, when all the powers of darkness 
seemed abroad. It is perfectly conceivable that the 
miraculous element may again appear in parallel seasons 
of convulsion and of final conflict between the kingdom 
of evil and the kingdom of good. 

There is, however, a notable diminution in the pro- 
portion of outward miracle or prodigy as the Church 
advances in years, and we have already marked its 
gradual decrease even in the apostolic age. The ideal 
of the Church's life is not the predominance of the 

* 'HL^ayovcri $at[J.6vac Kai 7ro\\rt£ idaetg tTTireXoiKn leal upuiai Trcpi jueXX- 

ovrutv. (Origen, Delarue edit., I. p. 311., comp. pp. 321-392.) 



l6 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

supernatural, but the intimate and complete union of 
the human and the divine. The gradual cessation of 
miraculous power is recognised by the Fathers. Origen 
asserts that only a few traces of the supernatural 
operation of the Divine Spirit remain. " The signs of 
the Holy Ghost," he says, " showed themselves from 
the commencement of the ministry of Christ; they were 
multiplied after His ascension, and subsequently dimin- 
ished. Some vestiges of them still remain among men."* 
Notwithstanding this avowal, we are constrained to 
admit that Origen and his contemporaries exaggerated 
to themselves the number of miracles wrought in their 
day. They wrote in perfect good faith, but were misled, 
undoubtedly, by certain superstitious notions which 
blended with their noble faith. When, for example, 
they attribute a power of healing to the simple reading 
of the holy books, and the invocation of the name 
of Jesus, they lower miracle to the rank of magic, 
and become believers in incantations and cabalistic 
formularies. t 

The miracles most often mentioned by the writers of 
the time are those wrought on demoniacs. Justin 
Martyr speaks of a great number of these unhappy 
beings, over whom all the heathen exorcists had had no 
power, and who were delivered through the invoca- 
tion of the name of Christ. J Tertullian describes, 
with his vivid imagination, these scenes of exorcism. 
He says : " Call before your tribunals a man known to 
be possessed ; any Christian will compel the spirit to 
confess honestly that he is a demon, even though he 
may have elsewhere falsely pretended to be a god. 

* "En Ixvr]. (Origen, I. p. 36.) Kqi vvv tTL *ix V7 l t^rlv Trap oXiyoig. 

(Ibid , p. 700 ) 
f Origen, I. p. 461. X Justin Martyr, " Apol.," I. p. 45. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 1J 

Bring, in the same manner, one in whom is supposed to 
be the spirit of a god, who, bending open-mouthed over 
the smoking altars, has breathed in the divinity. . . Be 
it the Virgin Coelestis, goddess of the rain, or 
Esculapius, the inventor of medicine — if (since they 
dare not lie to a Christian), they fail to confess that they 
are demons, shed upon the spot the blood of that daring 
Christian."* This bold supposition is evidently founded 
on positive facts, traces of which may be found in other 
writings of Tertullian.t After reading such passages, 
the conclusion is inevitable, that many superstitious 
notions about evil spirits were then accepted in the 
Church, which took up the current beliefs of that time, 
only modifying them in part by its own doctrines. The 
passage which we have quoted from Tertullian is con- 
clusive on this point. He. represents both pagans and 
Christians as agreed respecting the nature of the 
visitation, both treating it as a possession, and essaying 
with unequal success the cure of the demoniac. The 
phantoms called up by popular superstition, in a time 
of universal crisis, haunt the noblest spirits, and they 
cannot escape their influence. The Christians of that 
age unhesitatingly recognise as evil spirits all the 
false gods of paganism, and thus give credence to 
the fables of old Greco-Roman mythology. They 
unduly extend the doctrine of evil angels, and go far 
beyond the teaching of the sacred writings. We 
shall see to what a fanciful demonology they were led 
in their theology, by their deep conviction of the great- 
ness of the conflict waged by them against the powers 

* " Edatur hie aliquis sub tribunalibus vestris, quern doemone 
agi constet, jussus a quolibet Christiano loqui, spiritus ille, tarn 
se daemonem contitebitur de vero quam alibi deum de falso." 
(Tertullian, "Apol," c. xxiii.) 

f "Ad Scapul," II. See Origen, I. p. 471. 



l8 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of evil. The Christians of the East shared on these 
points the erroneous notions of the Western Christians. 
Justin Martyr and Origen are in harmony with Ter- 
tullian on the subject of the power of evil spirits; they 
behold them everywhere, and the great Alexandrine 
does not hesitate to speak of them as the ministers of 
the Divine judgments. It is not surprising that men, 
thus prepared to see demons where they are not, should 
multiply indefinitely the instances of exorcism. Every 
case of madness they regard as a possession ; melan- 
choly, despair — all come under the same designation, 
and instances of moral healing, which are fully ex- 
plicable by the virtue of the Gospel consolations, pass 
for miraculous cures. The sufferers themselves share 
the common superstition, and their malady becomes 
to them a supernatural and awful visitation. In such 
a heated atmosphere, terrible hallucinations were sure 
to arise. 

In short, miraculous gifts have not, at this era, dis- 
appeared from the Church, but they are of increasing 
rarity, more rare even than the Christians themselves 
suppose, incapable as they are, as yet, of discerning 
between the really miraculous, and miracles created 
by the imagination. It would be most unjust to con- 
found the miracles of the Gospel with the pseudo- 
miracles born of a heated brain. The mere comparison 
makes apparent the wide difference between them. 
On the one side, all is simplicity, strength, soberness ; 
the miracle has always a moral aspect ; faith alone 
comes into operation ; there is no approach to incanta- 
tion, or any mystic formulary. On the other side, an 
excited imagination plays the foremost part, and the 
influence of popular superstitions is clearly discernible. 
The great apologists of Christianity are themselves 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. ig 

sensible of this inferiority, and we shall find Origen 
treating miracles rather as the subjects of proof than 
as themselves adequate proof of any doctrine not other- 
wise verified, since such arguments can be brought 
forward in support of the false, no less than of the 
true. 

Having thus glanced at the obstacles which Chris- 
tianity encountered in the ancient world, and also at 
the points of contact which it found with the men of 
that age, we shall proceed to examine the mode of 
operation, and the means employed in the propagation 
of the Gospel. We observe, first, that the work was 
not done through any fixed organisaton. We shall not 
find in the Church of the second and third centuries, 
any of those great missionary associations which form 
so important a part of modern Christian agency, for 
the simple reason that the whole Church was then 
essentially a missionary society. A stranger and a 
sojourner rather than a settler in the world, hard 
pressed on all hands by surrounding paganism, its very 
life was one long conflict ; it must fight in self-defence, 
and conquer or die. There was no distinction then 
between home and foreign missions ; the Christian had 
but to cross his own threshold, and walk the public 
streets of his own city, and he found a pagan people at 
his own door to be converted. The whole civilisation of 
the empire was the creation of paganism ; there was 
thereiore no delusive veil, such as is too often drawn over 
the true state of the heart by modern civilisation, in which 
the presence of some Christian elements suffices to con- 
ceal from superficial observers, the undying paganism 
of a world at enmity with God. In the cultivated 
citizen of Rome or Alexandria, the Church saw only 
a pagan, harder to convert than a barbarian of Scythia 



20 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

or Germany, because more skilful in eluding the truth. 
Thus, every Church was a mission-centre, radiating 
Gospel light far and near. Missionaries were not sub- 
jected, any more than pastors or bishops, to any course 
of special training. Their aptitude for the work was 
tested, and they were chosen when they gave clear 
evidence of their vocation. It was thus Origen was 
delegated by the Church of Alexandria to carry the 
Gospel into Arabia, at the invitation of the governor 
of that distant country, who had embraced Christianity.* 
Before him, Pantsenus, the famous teacher of Clement, 
had long preached in India. t A new mission generally 
arose out of some incidental circumstance, and wher- 
ever a Christian set his foot, however barren the soil, 
there he planted the Cross, and gathered around him 
the nucleus of a Church. We have testimony that can- 
not be contravened, — since it comes from an enemy — 
to the spontaneity of missionary zeal in the early Church. 
" Many of the Christians," writes Celsus, " without any 
special calling, watch for all opportunities, and both 
within and without the temples, boldly proclaim their 
faith ; they find their way into the cities, and the 
armies, and there having called the people together, 
harangue them with fanatical gestures. "J 

Christianity was carried from Asia Minor to Lyons, 
through the commercial relations between that rich 
city of the Gauls, and the opulent provinces of Asia. 
It was taken into Germany by some prisoners of war ; 
and, at the close of a fierce persecution which scattered 
the Christians of Alexandria, a Church was founded 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. VI. c. 19. t Ibid, Bk. V. c. 10. 

J UoWoi Kal avuvvpiot paara Ik rrjg TrpooTvxovoi)g airiag, xal iv 
lepdlg r) t%io \tpiov, oi 8e icai ayelpavreg «at iTri(poirevovrr]g iroXeaiv rf 
orpaTOTcdoig, Kivovvrai wg Qeawi^ovTsg. (Origen, " Contr. Cels.," 

VII. 9.) 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 21 

by the fugitives in the neighbouring countries. Every- 
thing was free and spontaneous in the great chain of 
Christian victories, which after two centuries enclosed 
the empire as in a vast network. The natural relations of 
life aided the work of proselytism. A new convert 
became the missionary of his family. The most humble 
were often the most powerful ; it was an obscure old 
man who gave Justin Martyr to the Church. The 
account of his conversion, given us by that illustrious 
teacher, shows what was the holy boldness and skill 
of these voluntary and self-constituted missionaries. 
As Justin was wandering along the sea-shore, seeking 
to calm the troubles of his spirit, wearied with the vain 
search he had made for truth from land to land, he met 
an old man of venerable aspect. The stranger read 
the lines of sorrow and anxious thought upon Justin's 
face, and asked him what he was seeking in so lonely 
a place. "I delight," replied Justin, "in such quiet 
wanderings, where nothing comes to disturb my inward 
musings. This wilderness suits well with philosophic 
meditation." " You are then," responded the old man, 
" a lover of knowledge only ; you love not virtue nor 
truth. You are but a sophist, and have never tried to 
act."* This dart, aimed by a sure hand, and guided 
by the divination of love, sank into the unquiet con- 
science ; the intercourse was carried on in the same 
earnest vein, and terminated as we have said, in the 
conversion of Justin. 

The Christians made use of all the facilities offered 
them. The customs of ancient society were more 
adapted than those of modern life for public discus- 
sions and free converse. Life, so to speak, opened 

* $i\o\6yog ovv rig av, <pi\epyog is ovca/j-ivg, oute (pi\d\r]9r]g. (St. Just, 
"Dial, cum Tryph .," p. 220.) 



22 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

freely to the sun, under the beautiful southern sky. 
The public square was the common meeting-place of 
the whole community ; there, were gathered the idlers, 
the curious, and the spirits eager for novelty, like the 
Athenians in the time of St. Paul. There the philo- 
sopher, wrapped in his mantle, soon drew around 
him an attentive crowd ; and the Christian, ready 
"to be all things to all men," there unfolded the 
mysteries of his divine philosophy. Public discus- 
sions were a recognised custom of society. Origen, 
in his book against Celsus, speaks of a conference 
which he had had with some Jews, and which ap- 
pears to have been conducted in all due form, with 
judges of the debate.* It was after such a discussion 
at Rome, with the philosopher Crescens, that Justin 
Martyr was put to death. t We know that the ancient 
philosophers loved to teach in the presence of the 
beauties of nature. This custom was peculiarly adapted 
to aid the propagation of the faith. Many of the apolo- 
getic writings of these early days, arose out of free 
discussions held in the open country. They might be 
called the Christian Tusculana. The dialogue with 
Trypho took place on a seat in the covered portico, 
under which athletes used to exercise. J The " Octa- 
vius " of Minutius Felix commences thus : — " We 
arranged to go to Ostia, an enchanting spot. . . . 
The vacation had come, and the pleasures of the 
vintage time took the place of the toils of the bar. 
After the burning summer, had come the tempered heat 
of autumn. We turned our steps one morning, soon 
after dawn, towards the sea-shore, to breathe the pure, 

* 'Ev tivl TrpoQ 'lovSaiwv Xeyo/JisvovQ Gotyovg FiaXeZei, TrXeioviov KpivhvTwv 
to Xeyofxtvov. (Origen, I. p. 360. See also p. 370.) 

t Eusebius, "H. E./' Bk. IV. c. 16. J Justin Martyr, p. 217. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 23 

life-giving air, and to enjoy the pleasant sensation of 
treading the soft, yielding sand. Talking as we went, 
we crossed the town and came to the beach.. Tiny 
waves were playing over it as if to smooth it for our 
tread. And as the sea, even when the winds are silent, 
is still a little stirred, and even when it does not rush 
upon the shore in floods of snowy foam, yet heaves and 
breaks in wavelets on the sand, we found a keen delight 
in letting it reach us in its playful attacks as we stood 
by the water's edge. Now the tide played around our 
feet ; now it drew back into itself, as if it would return 
to the bosom of the great sea. Slowly we wandered 
along the winding margin, beguiling the length of the 
way by the charm of conversation."* This simple 
picture reminds one of the introduction to Plato's 
" Phaedon." Cyprian's treatise opens with a descrip- 
tion of the same kind addressed to Donatus. " We 
have a sure retreat at hand," he says, " in the quiet 
country near us. A vine climbing along the supporting 
wood-work, festoons its branches, and makes a green 
portico of leaves. How favourable a place for our 
meditations together ! While our eyes rejoice in the 
enchanting sight of these trees and vines, our souls 
shall at the same time be fed with converse. "t 

The Christians did not content themselves with these 
casual opportunities for intercourse ; they also provided 
that a systematic exposition of Christianity, distinct 
from the regular preaching, should be given to the 
pagans who desired instruction in the truth. Thus 
was founded at Alexandria that great school to which 
we shall have such frequent occasion to reier, which, 

* Minutius Felix, " Octavius," II. III. 

■' " Animum simul et auditus instruit et pascit oblectus." (Cyprian, 
«Ad Donat..," I.J 



24 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

presenting its doctrines to the world through such men 
as Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen, acquired extra- 
ordinary repute, and rallied around those illustrious 
teachers, not only the catechumens of the Church, but 
also a large number of pagans drawn together from all 
parts of the empire.* Antioch subsequently occupied 
the same position. These great Christian schools, 
which could hold comparison with the most brilliant 
centres of ancient philosophy, contributed effectually to 
gain credit for the new religion in high quarters. 

By all these combined means Christianity made daily 
progress. It now remains for us to follow its apostles 
in their various spheres of fruitful labour. 

§ II. Progress of Christianity within the Empire and 
beyond it. Sketch of the different Churches. The Eastern 
Church. 

(a) Conquests in Asia, in Greece, and in Eastern Africa. 

Asia was the cradle of Christianity; it was also the 
first mission-field, and we have already enumerated the 
flourishing Churches, which were there founded in the 
first century. A valuable document enables us to trace 
with certainty the progress of the new religion during 
the course of the second and third centuries, even 
where exact statements from contemporary writers are 
wanting. The list of bishops who had a seat in the 
Council of Nicaea (which has been found more complete 
in a Syriac manuscript recently published), contains 
an enumeration of the Eastern Churches which sent 
representatives to these great ecclesiastical assem- 
blies, t 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. V. c. 10, n. 

t " Analecta Nicaena," fragments relating to the Council of 
Nicaea. The Syriac text, from an ancient MS. in the British 
Museum, with a translation, notes, &c, by B. Harris Cowper, 1857. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 25 

This list shows us that in the countries where Chris- 
tianity had been already planted, it gained many fresh 
conquests during this period, and that new Churches 
rose up around those of earlier date. This progress 
must have been very marked in Palestine, for that 
country had nineteen representatives at Nicsea. The 
Church of Jerusalem, after the rebuilding of that city 
by Adrian, was chiefly composed of pagan converts, 
as is shown by the names of the bishops mentioned by 
Eusebius. The more than ordinary respect and repu- 
tation which it enjoyed, were due rather to the sacred 
memories connected with its name than to its own in- 
fluence ; these did not, however, prevent its being 
eclipsed by a neighbouring Church. The town of 
Csesarea, raised by Vespasian to the rank of a Roman 
colony and the residence of the procurators, was the 
true capital of the province.* At the commencement 
of the fourth century, it possessed an important Church, 
of which Eusebius, the historian, was bishop, and 
which, until the Council of Chalcedon, was the metro- 
polis of the province. To the north of Palestine, in 
Phoenicia, ten Churches are mentioned ;• among others 
those of Tyre and Sidon. Thus the empire of the 
purest spirituality had been established in these ancient 
centres of vile Phoenician naturalism. Twenty-two 
Churches of Ccelesyria sent delegates to Nicsea. Be- 
side the familiar names of Antioch and Laodicea, we 
find those of many new Churches, revealing the progress 
of Christianity, as Larissa, near Caesarea, and Lamo- 
sata, where arose that great discussion on the nature of 
Christ, which acquired such importance subsequently 
under the passionate treatment of Arius. 

The Church of Antioch still preserved the high place 
* " Haec Judaeas caput est." (Tacitus, " Historia/' II. 79.) 

3 



26 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which it attained in the previous era. The fruitful 
nursery of the first missionaries in the first century, and 
rendered illustrious at the commencement of the second 
by the martyrdom of Ignatius, it remained faithful to so 
glorious a past, and was regarded as the second metro- 
polis of primitive Christianity. 

There was not a single province of Asia Minor which 
had not been furrowed in every direction by Christian 
labourers, and where their mission had not gained some 
fruit. Cilicia sent eleven bishops to Nicaea, among 
whom we note the Bishop of Tarsus — the city of St. 
Paul — and of Mopsuestia. Cappadocia was represented 
by ten of its pastors. Tyana, rendered famous by the 
magician Apollonius, Comana, Cybistra, and many 
other cities, appeared in the list of the Council. 
Christianity had reached the shores of the Euxine, and 
founded Churches in the provinces of Pontus and 
Paphlagonia. It had sent missionaries as far as the 
Hellespont, and into the regions where once was Troy 
— that country of which the very air was laden with the 
poetry of Homer. The cross had been planted in 
Lydia ; around.the celebrated Churches of Ephesus and 
Smyrna, of Thyatira and Philadelphia, were grouped a 
number of humbler Churches of more recent origin, 
Phrygia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, which had as many as ten 
bishops at Nicaea ; Isauria, which had seventeen ; Caria, 
which had five — all witness to the same result. The 
names of the bishops of Galatia show how far 
Christianity had made its way into the interior of the 
country. The islands bordering the coast of Asia, — 
Rhodes, Cos, Lemnos, Corcyra, — received the Gospel 
from the Continent ; so likewise did the island of 
Cyprus, which had listened to it for the first time from 
the lips of Paul. Thus, in the very countries where 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 27 

paganism had reached its lowest depth of corruption, 
in that voluptuous land where religion had sanctioned 
and smiled on all forms of excess, the religion of most 
austere morality won its adherents by thousands, and 
gathered them around*that symbol of utter self-sacrifice 
— the Cross — in the very presence of those gorgeous 
temples, in which pleasure was made a god and infamy 
a religious rite. What an overwhelming confutation 
of those degrading doctrines, which teach that man is 
irresistibly moulded by the climate in which he lives, 
is chaste and sober in the North, voluptuous in the 
South, a votary of Cybele or Venus in Asia, and for 
the very same reason a worshipper of Odin in the 
gloomy forests of Germany ! 

The countries adjoining Asia Minor and Syria were 
early visited by missionaries. In the second century we 
find Christian teachers in Armenia. The reputed letter 
of Jesus Christ to Abgarus, already noted by us, and 
the missions attributed to Bartholomew and Thaddeus, 
are valuable indications of the primitive tradition as to 
the very early propagation of the faith in those countries. 
It is certain that towards the commencement of the 
third century, Christianity had there made notable 
progress. The great apostle of the country was Gregory, 
surnamed "the Enlightener," who was born in 257. 
"Under the king Tiridatus," says Cedrenus, "he 
effected the conversion of the whole country.* Pre- 
pared for this great work at Csesarea, where he had 
passed a part of his youth, and had matured in a life of 
solitude and asceticism, he began to preach the Gospel 

* 'H Traaa'Apfxevela tig tv,vtov XpiTTOv ttihtiv ^erariRsrai. (Cedrenus, 
"Ad Annum," XIX., Const. Magni.) Sozomen l" Hist," II. c. 8.) 
attributes the conversion of Tiridatus to a miracle, not mentioning 
Gregory. 



28 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

just when the fierce persecution under Diocletian had 
reached Armenia. The conversion of the King arrested 
the storm, and assured to the Church at least the 
external conquest of the country, for the protection of 
princes already began to exert Its fatal influence, and 
conversions in masses took the place of the slow and 
sure progress, effected by the dissemination of the truth. 
The King, however, would not have yielded so soon, if 
the preaching of Gregory had not obtained extraordinary 
success; he did no more than recognise a victory already 
won. Gregory, who united great ability to ardent zeal, 
covered the country with Christian schools, in which 
the rising generation was trained in the religion of Christ. 
He went to Csesarea, under the title of Bishop of 
Armenia, to obtain the ecclesiastical legalisation of his 
labours, another indication of the revolution which 
was insensibly being effected within the Church.* 

Further northward,? the Gospel was at the same 
period penetrating to the foot of the Caucasus in Iberia, 
under affecting circumstances, which mark the spon- 
taneous character of primitive missions. We borrow 
this narrative from the historian Socrates, who relates 
the facts more simply than Sozomen, though still with 
the addition of legendary details: — " A woman of cha r ste 
and pure life was carried captive into Iberia, by a dis- 
pensation of Divine providence. In the midst of pagans 
she lived a life of severe austerity. Resisting every 
solicitation to sin, fasting often, and constant in prayer, 

* Fabricius, " Lux Salutaris," p. 640 ; " Histoire Generate de 
l'Etablissement du Christianisme," translated by A. Bost, vol. I. p. 
292 ; Lenain de Tillemont, " Memoires," vol. V. p. 112. 

t About the year 320. Although the conversion of Iberia to 
Christianity was not effected till some years after the period of 
which we are treating, we include it, as closely connected with the 
missions of Asia Minor. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 2Q 

she was the wonder of the barbarians. It happened 
that an infant son of the King fell ill, and the Queen, 
according to the custom of the country, had him carried 
to some wise women to know if they could prescribe 
any remedy for his sickness. As the child found no 
relief after being taken by his nurse to these women, 
he was at last brought to the poor captive. In the 
presence of several women, she declared that she had 
no material aid to offer, but having taken the child in 
her arms, she said, — 'Jesus Christ, who has healed 
many sick, will heal this child.' After so saying, she 
prayed, calling upon God to help, and the child was 
cured." Some days after, the Queen herself was taken 
ill, and she also was healed by the prayers of the slave. 
The King wished to acknowledge her benefits by rich 
presents: "I have no use for these treasures," she 
replied; " religion is all I need. But the greatest boon 
to me would be, that you should worship the God whom 
I know." Shortly after this, while the King was out 
hunting, a sudden and awful darkness fell upon him. 
He remembered the God of the slave, and called upon 
Him. He immediately placed himself under her for 
instruction, and became the propagator of the new faith 
among his people.* 

It is difficult to determine with accuracy the limit 
reached by Christianity in the East during this period. 
It is certain that it gained important successes in 
Persia. It there came in contact with a religion which, 
essentially erroneous as it was, was yet far superior to 
the vile paganism of Asia Minor. The devotees of 
Zoroaster recognised, as we have already observed, the 
great conflict between good and evil, which lies at the 
basis of human history. True they erred in too closely 
* Socrates, " H. E./' I. c. 20. Compare with Sozomen, II. c. 7. 



30 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

identifying that conflict with material elements ; they 
knew not how to rise above the symbols which set it 
forth, and too often reduced it to a mere war between 
light and darkness ; nevertheless, they worshipped in 
Ormuzd a divinity endowed with many traits of the 
moral ideal. He was not a god to be honoured by lust 
and bloodshed. But the " Avesta" did not break the 
fatal circle of dualism ; on the contrary, it recognised 
the eternal opposition between the power of darkness and 
the power of light in the most vivid manner. Ahriman 
was represented as a gigantic serpent entangling the 
whole world in its coils, and infusing its poison into 
all beings. The religion of Zoroaster offered no sure 
and certain means of subduing this malignant power, 
but by that very fact it fostered in its votaries a sense 
of the need of healing and deliverance, and prepared the 
way for Christianity. 

The incense offered by the magi to the infant Christ 
in His cradle, is a tribute from these old oriental religions 
to the religion of mankind, and a vague indication of 
aspirations and dim desires after God, which heaved 
beneath them all. Christianity was planted in Persia 
in the second century ; this is proved by the fact, that 
the Manichean heresy arose in that country at the 
commencement of the third century. If the new reli- 
gion underwent some change from its contact with 
Parseeism, that in its turn was sensibly modified by 
Christianity. The religion of Zoroaster came largely 
under the influence of Christian doctrine ; the 
" Bundehesch," the sacred book which dates irom the 
first centuries of our era, bears evident trace of this 
modification, and of the adoption of Christian ideas. It 
is not known how Christianity was introduced into 
Persia, probably it entered in the train of those constant 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 31 

wars waged between that country and the Roman 
empire. Captive soldiers possibly carried the Gospel 
with them into the enemies' land. It is certain that 
by the middle of the fourth century, the Christians in 
Persia were sufficiently numerous to be recommended 
by Constantine to the King Schapur II.* This recom- 
mendation was not without avail, for in the year 343 a 
terrible persecution broke out, and its violence shows 
what must have been the triumphs of the Church before 
it arose. A Persian bishop sat in the Council of 
Nicsea. 

Was Christianity carried from Persia into India, or, 
at least, to the frontiers of that country, which border 
on the far East ?t This is a much controverted 
question, because it is well known that the ancients 
comprehended Ethiopia, Arabia Felix, and the ad- 
joining countries under the name of India. £ It is 
generally agreed that it was in Ethiopia that Pantsenus, 
the illustrious founder of the school of Alexandria, 
preached the Gospel. § In spite, however, of the 
absence of historic evidence, we are disposed to believe 
that some Christian missionaries did at this time reach 
the frontiers of India. We have already mentioned 
that, in the time of Constantine, a missionary return- 
ing from that country, stated that he had there found 
traces of primitive Christianity. || Arabia heard the 

* UvOofisvog irapd rG>v HapaCjv y'svei ttXyjOvsiv tclq tov Oeov tick-Xqalac, 
Xaovg n. /.ivniavcpovg toiq XpitJ-OLi TroijxvaiQ evaytXdZevOai. (Eusebius, 
" In Vita Const.," IV. 8, 9. Compare Sozomen, II. 15. See Fab- 
ricius, " Lux Salutaris," p. 634. 

f Socrates (I. 19) and Sozomen (II. 24") assert the fact. 

t See Fabricius, " Lux Salutaris," p. 628 ; Mosheim, " De Rebus 
ante Const. Comment.," p 207, and especially Valesius' note on 
Socrates, p. 13. 

§ Eusebius, " H. E.," V. 10. Nicephorus, IV. 32. 

|j Philostorgius, III. 4. 



32 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

preaching of Origen,* and many churches were founded 
in that land. Six bishops from Arabia sat in the 
Council of Nicsea. Abyssinia did not receive its first 
missionaries till after the Great Council. The tradition 
that the Gospel was preached there in the time of the 
apostles is wholly unauthentic. t 

Christianity consolidated during this period the con- 
quests of the previous age in Greece and Eastern Africa. 
We find Greece largely represented in the Council of 
Nicsea. J We have few details of the missions carried on 
in these countries, because Christianity was there spread 
by a spontaneous expansion, which was rather a radia- 
tion from the centres of light already existing, than a 
mission properly so called. The Church of Alexandria 
was the metropolis of Egypt. It diffused the Christian 
faith through all the ancient provinces of the country, 
in Thebais and in Libya. § Thus passed away that old 
Egyptian idolatry, which had supposed itself immortal 
in its immobility. Alexandria was, during the whole of 
this period, the metropolis of that oriental Christianity, 
which was then of so prominent a type ; the Eastern 
Church thence derived its purest splendour. So long 
as it was under the ascendant of the city of Clement 
and Origen, it was characterised by a more free and 
soaring genius, was less fettered by tradition and 
routine than its Western sister, while equalling her in 

* Eusebius, VI c. 19. 

f " Terram hanc nullo apostolicae doctrinae vomere proscissam." 
(Runn, "Hist.," I. 19. See Ludolph, "Comment, ad suam His- 
torian* ^thiopicam.") 

I Bunsen, " Analect. Antenicaena," p. 271. 

§ Vansleb {" History of the Church of Alexandria," p. 29.) quotes 
the following canon from the Arabic and Ethiopian version of the 
Council of Nicsea : " All the faithful who are in Egypt, Lybia, the 
Pentapolis and Nubia, ought to be under the government of the 
Bishop of Alexandria." 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 33 

zeal and fidelity, and wearing, like her, the crown of 
martyrdom. We shall see this type of the Eastern 
Church becoming more and more marked throughout 
the whole of the first three centuries. 

(b) Conquests in Western Africa, Spain, and Italy. The 
Western Church. 

The widest and most fertile field of missions in the 
West was proconsular Africa. The Church there 
founded rapidly rose to the first rank in numerical 
importance and influence.* This extensive and fruitful 
province had become in part the granary of Italy, which, 
as mistress of the world, did not take the pains to till 
its own prolific soil. Embracing the two Numidias, 
Mauritania, and Tingitania, it possessed all climates from 
the burning zone of the South to the snows of Atlas. The 
Roman administration had successfully pursued in 
Africa its course of assimilation. Externally, every- 
thing bore the impress of Rome ; it had set its stamp 
on organisation, on religion, on manners ; nevertheless, 
beneath this Roman surface, the African nationality was 
preserved nearly intact. Not to speak of the remote 
provinces which remained almost wholly alien, if not 
to the domination, at least to the civilisation of Italy ; 
nor of the nomadic tribes wandering in the deserts of 
Numidia and at the foot of Atlas, there were to be 
found, even in those brilliant cities where the yoke of 
the foreigner seemed most firmly fixed, characteristic 
traits of the primitive race, and especially relics of its 

* Our principal authority, apart from the Fathers, is Munter's 
excellent work, " Primordia Ecclesiae Africanse," Hafrne, 1829. See 
also a noble paper, by M. Villemain, in the " Coirespondant " of 
December 25th, 1858, entitled, "Du premier apostolat chretien 
dans la province romaine d Afrique." 



34 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ancient beliefs. The Africans, without separating from 
established paganism, or braving the perils of schism, 
found means to remain faithful to their ancient religion, 
which was derived, as we know, from Asia, and was 
only a somewhat modifiedform of Phoenician naturalism. 
They attached themselves to that phase of Greco- 
Roman polytheism, which approached most nearly to 
their primitive worship. Instead of Dido they wor- 
shipped Jupiter ; it was but a change of name. No 
people were more open to magic arts than these 
devotees of nature, who put all their confidence in her 
hidden powers. The writings of the time reveal on 
every page this tendency towards Asiatic -pantheism, 
and this susceptibility to magic. The presence of the 
old African type under the Roman dominion, asserted 
itself very expressively in the language of the country. 
It was indeed Latin, the despotic tongue of the victors, 
imposed upon the vanquished ; but how different is this 
African Latin from the Latin of Rome ! It is fired, as 
it were, by the burning sun of the soil, incorrect, 
abrupt, subtle, but of incomparable power. 

The capital of proconsular Africa, which rapidly 
became the centre of African Christianity, was Carthage, 
the famous rival of republican Rome, which, having 
risen in renewed youth trom her ashes, almost equalled, 
like Alexandria, the glory oi imperial Rome. Enriched 
by its commerce, illustrious for its lawyers, who formed 
a school of jurisprudence in the empire ; adorned with 
all the splendour of a civilisation at once Asiatic and 
Roman, Carthage saw a vast population flow into its 
walls. It also aspired to distinction in letters and the 
fine arts ; and in that age of general decay, the impetu- 
ousness of the African nature was an important 
element of success. Schools were opened by celebrated 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 35 

rhetors, into which crowded a brilliant youthful race. 
Public readings were established as at Rome. Apuleius 
read his " Florides " before the assembled multitude, 
as Herodotus had once read his history at the Olympic 
games. It is true that the historian delivered his immortal 
pages at those grand games which formed the souls of 
heroes, while the African rhetor read his cold com- 
positions on the spot where he had been preceded by 
jugglers and rope-dancers ; but this fact only gives us 
a gauge of the difference between the two ages. A city 
like Carthage could not be a centre of civilisation with- 
out being at the same time a centre of corruption. Its 
excesses had made it notorious, even in a time of 
universal infamy. It had faithfully preserved this 
tradition of Asiatic paganism, and added to it all the 
resources of a superior civilisation. Salvian, who lived 
a century later, at a period when Christianity was 
finally victorious, gives us a graphic picture of the 
dissoluteness of Carthage, which must have been yet 
more true to the life when the city was still in the 
depths of pagan darkness. " Shall I speak," he says, 
( J of this city, once the compeer of Rome in courage, and 
since then in splendour and rank — Carthage, the great 
rival of Rome, the Rome of Africa ? * There I find 
the administrative system of the empire complete, 
schools of all the liberal arts, and of the philosophers, 
gymnasia, where languages may be learned and the 
mind polished. There, too, are military forces, and 
their commandants, and all the array of the proconsular 
office. And yet, I see this famous city overflowing 
with vice, consumed by every form of corruption, more 
full of crimes than of inhabitants, abounding in riches, 

* " In Africano orbe quasi Romam." (Salviani, " De Guber- 
natione Dei," Bk. VII. pp. 149, 150.J 



36 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

but yet more abounding in sin.* I see men struggling 
with each other for the championship of evil, some 
claiming the palm in rapacity, others in impurity; some 
stultified by wine, others by gluttony; here crowned 
with flowers, there steeped in perfumes; all bearing the 
brand of idle and corrupting luxury, almost all taken 
in the mortal snare of error ; and if a few escape the 
intoxication of wine, I see them no less intoxicated with 
sin.t What quarter of the town is there which is not 
running over with vice ? In what square, or in what 
street is there not a house of infamy ?" Such was 
Carthage, the city devoted to the great goddess of Asia, 
and ever faithful to its origin. The ancient worship 
lingered in the country districts, without troubling 
to shelter itself under the externals of the State religion. 
There lived the old Carthaginians, speaking the lan- 
guage of their fathers, — an Asiatic dialect resembling in 
many respects the Hebrew, — and worshipping their 
old national gods. St. Augustine complains repeatedly 
of the obstacle raised by this foreign language to 
the propagation of the faith.! Yet this barbarous 
race was reached by the Gospel, and it gave several 
bishops to the Church of Africa. The Numidian and 
Moorish tribes, inhabiting the foot of Mount Atlas, 
however, remained strangers to Christianity during 
this period. 

The early history of the Church of proconsular Africa 
is as obscure as is that of most other ancient 
Churches. The usual attempt has been made to trace 

* "Video quasi scaturientem vitiis, plenam quidem turbis, sed 
magis turpitudinibus." (Salviani, " De Gubernatione Dei/' Bk. VII. 
pp. 149, 150.) t " Omnes tamen peccatis ebrios." (Ibid.) 

I Augustine, " In Johann," Vol. XIV. p. 27. He is speaking in 
this passage of the old Punic tongue. (Jerome, " Prsefatio ad 
Galatas." Arnobius, "Adv. Gent.," I. 10.) 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. $7 

its foundation to an apostle. Popular legend, con- 
founding Simon of Cyrene with Simon Zelotes, has 
made the latter the first missionary in Africa. There 
has also been an endeavour to connect the African 
Church, according to preconceived system, with the 
Church of Rome, by attributing to St. Peter the sending 
of apostolic legates to Carthage. This is, however, 
a gratuitous supposition originating with the hierarchical 
party. We know how diligently that party has laboured 
retrospectively to create for itself title-deeds of high 
antiquity.* Tertuliian never represented the Church 
of Africa as of apostolic origin, although he made a 
complete enumeration of the Churches belonging to 
that category. Is it possible that he should have 
passed over in silence that which was both best known 
and best beloved by him ?t He even goes so far as to 
distinguish between the Church of Africa and the 
apostolic Churches. % If the Church of Carthage was 
not founded in the first century, we are inclined to 
believe that it received Christianity from the capital of 
the empire, to which proconsular Africa, as a Roman 
province, was bound by the closest ties. Communica- 
tions with Alexandria were few and difficult, partly 
owing to the difference of language, while Latin was 
spoken at Carthage as at Rome. We may suppose 
a variety of very simple and natural circumstances, 
under which the Gospel might be brought to the shores 

* Munter, " Primordia," p. 8. 

f See Tertuliian. " De Praescriptionibus," c. xxi., xxxii., xxxvi. ; 
"Adv. Marcionem." IV. 5. 

I " Eas ego ecclesias proposui quas et ipsi apostoli vel apostolici 
viri condiderunt. Habent igitur et illae eamdem consuetudinis 
auctoritatem, tempora et antecessores opponunt magis quam 
posterae istae." (Tertuliian, " De Virginibus Velandis," II.) Ter- 
tuliian is speaking in this passage of the Churches of Greece and 
of the East. 



38 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of Africa. Some Christian from Italy may have come 
to Carthage as a trader, or a legionary, or possibly to 
escape from persecution. Tertullian speaks of the 
peculiarly friendly relations which existed between the 
Church of Rome and the Churches of Africa.* Cyprian 
calls the former the root of the latter. t St. Augustine 
is not less explicit : "It is manifest," he says, "that 
the foundation of the Churches, established throughout 
Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Sicily, and the intermediate 
islands, is due entirely to the priests appointed by the 
venerable apostle Peter and his successors." J Augustine 
does not affirm that all these Churches were directly 
founded by St. Peter, since he includes his successors. 
The only positive fact brought out by this passage — if 
it is divested of any hierarchical colouring — is the 
foundation of the Church of Carthage by Christians 
from Rome. Moreover, the very same Father, in $ther of 
his writings, states that the Churches of Greece and of 
the East took part in the African missions. He calls 
them the root from which grew the Gospel in Africa, 
and he informs us that the Christians of the latter 
country had had friendly relations with those Churches, 
followed up by letters. § There is nothing to prevent 
our supposing that missionaries from the trading cities 

* " Quod earn Africanis ecclesiis contesserant." (Tertullian, " De 
Praescriptionibus," c. xxxvi.) 

f "Radix et matrix." (Cyprian, Epist xlviii., "Ad Cornelium.") 

I Manifestum esse in omnem Italiam, Gallias, Hispanias, 
Africam, atque Siciliam insulasque interjacentes nullum instituisse 
ecclesias, nisi eas quas venerabilis Petrus apostolus et ejus succes- 
sors constituerint sacerdotes." (Epist. xxv., "Ad Constant.," 
p. 856.) 

§ "Caeteris terris unde Evangelium ad ipsam Africam venit." 
(Epist. lxii., " Contra Pertinaciam Donatistorum.") Compare with 
the following passage, " Graecis ubi fides orta est." (Epist. clxxviii ) 
" Ilia radice Ecclesiarum orientalium unde Evangelium in Africam 
venit." (Ibid.) 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 39 

of Asia Minor may have landed at Carthage, and there 
aided in the propagation of the faith. 

Such was the origin of that Church of Africa which 
played so important a part in the first ages of the 
Christian era. It had neither the speculative genius of 
the Church of Alexandria, nor the policy and wisdom 
of the Church of Rome, but it carried alike into its 
internal discussions and external operations for the 
defence of Christianity, its constitutional vehemence 
and ardour. This was at once its strong and its weak 
point. Ever prone to extremes, it was torn by schism, 
and made the breach irreparable by its own violence ; 
but it had ardent zeal, indomitable spirit, irresistible 
eloquence. Tertullian remains after all, in spite of his 
errors, its most faithful representative. No Church 
made such rapid conquests. It won its trophies in the 
country districts* no less than in the towns, among the 
field labourers as well as in the higher classes of 
society. In the time of Cyprian, the heretics were 
numbered by thousands,! which presupposes a very 
large number of Christians. At the first Council of 
Carthage, in the year 225, seventy bishops from pro- 
consular Africa and Numidia occupied seats. It is no 
exaggeration to reckon the number of Christians in 
these countries, at the beginning of the third century, 
at more than a hundred thousand. The Church of 
Carthage was like an important town in the capital of 
the province. 

Spain probably received Christianity at once from 
Carthage and from Rome. The supposed missions 
of St. James the Greater and St. Paul are purely 
legendary, and ought not to detain the historian 

* "Inagris." (Tertullian, " Apol.," c xli., xlii.) f Epist. lxxiii. 



40 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

for a moment.* It is not possible to do more than 
verify the existence of many Churches in Spain in 
the third century. The labours of the missionaries who 
carried the Gospel there are known only by their fruits; 
but if their names have perished, the trace of their 
footprints remained deeply impressed upon that land, 
where so many races were to succeed each other. 
The Church of Spain had acquired importance at 
the close of the third century, for it yielded many 
martyrs in the persecution under Domitian. Several 
Councils were held in this country during the course of 
the fourth century. t 

Christianity had been already victoriously established 
in Italy during the preceding period. It went on 
spreading from town to town, during the epoch now 
before us, and gathered adherents from all classes of 
society. We have no precise documents giving evidence 
of this progressive movement, except the general state- 
ments of the Fathers already cited ; but it is a well- 
known fact, that at the commencement of the fourth 
century, the Church of Rome embraced an entire 
people. It was a power which must be recognised, and 
either exterminated or controlled. Between the policy 
of Dioclesian and that of Constantine, no middle course 
was possible. It was vain to pour contempt upon this new 
society, in all the vigour of youth and of faith, fortified 
and increased by conflict, strong in numbers and in 
zeal. The memorial inscriptions in the catacombs 

* These legends are to be found in Fabricius, " Lux Salutaris," 
p. 374 It is impossible to ascertain how the former originated. 
The latter is sufficiently explained by the wish expressed by St. 
Paul to visit Spain. 

| See Rosseeuw Saint-Hilaire, " Histoire d'Espagne," Vol. I. p. 
160. Cyprian (Epist. lvii.) speaks already of the Churches of Leon, 
Asturias, Merida, and. Sarragossa. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 41 

prove that the Christians were gathered from all 
classes of society. Side by side with the grave of the 
consulary, we find the tablet bearing the name of a 
slave or humble artisan ; the remains of the Roman 
matron rest beside those of the humblest of her sex. 
By the aid of these names we are enabled to appre- 
ciate the progress made by Christian missions among 
all ranks. The Church of Rome, during the first 
three centuries, strove rather to increase its own 
numerical importance, than to exercise a wide influence 
abroad. It gave no illustrious teachers to ancient 
Christianity; it pronounced no great decisions in the 
polemics which arose. All the gravest questions of 
doctrine were debated elsewhere. Without deserving 
the reproach of a petty policy, this Church, by a sort of 
instinct of race, occupied itself far more with points of 
government and organisation than of speculation. Its 
central position in the capital of the empire, and its 
glorious memories, guaranteed to it a growing authority, 
and thus its supremacy was virtually established long 
before it was technically recognised. We shall closely 
follow this great revolution when we come to study the 
history of ecclesiastical government during the first 
three centuries. 

The Church founded at Lyons in Roman Gaul, which 
was a sort of metropolis to the whole of that country, 
was early bound by close ties to the Church of Rome. 
We shall do well, therefore, to include it in the same 
category ; for at the period when the Gospel was 
preached in this part of Gaul, that country was wholly 
incorporated with the empire. It had accepted the 
Roman dominion and religion, and had received in 
exchange a brilliant civilisation, and all the lavish 
luxury with which Rome adorned its great cities. 

4 



42 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Magnificent monuments, temples gleaming with gold" 
and marble, vast arenas opened for sanguinary sports 
— all these things, which were too often taken as a 
sufficient compensation for the loss of liberty, Spain 
possessed in abundance. The new religion was carried 
into these countries by the Christians of Asia Minor, 
who were probably led thither by some of those com- 
mercial transactions very frequent between southern 
Gaul and the East. Lyons was the principal depot of 
the trade of Gaul. This city numbered many Asiatics 
among its inhabitants. Possibly these may have formed 
the first nucleus of the Christian Church which led to 
the mission of Pothinus and Irenseus. According to 
Gregory of Tours, these Christian emissaries were sent 
by Polycarp himself.* Their success was great, and 
the Church rapidly increased. We see by the names 
of its members, which are mentioned in the letter 
written from the Church of Lyons to the Churches of 
Asia Minor, that the Greek and the Gallic elements 
were there represented as well as the Roman. There 
are but few names of the wealthy, such as the physician 
Alexander the Phrygian. Slaves like Blandina find 
place side by side with their masters ; freed slaves, 
provincial subjects, and Romans by birth, all meet toge- 
ther.? Great zeal and immoveable steadfastness distin- 
guished the ancient Church of Lyons, which iought 
bravely in the first ranks during the terrible conflict of 
the second century. From it sprang the Church oi the 
Eduans and that of Vienna. Christianity appears even 
to have spread into Belgica and Germania, Prima and" 

* Gregory of Tours, " Historia Francias," Vol. I. p. 27. 

-I- See the account of these names in Eusebius, " H. E." Bk. V. 
c. 1., and in Tillemont's " Memoires," Vol. III. p. 38; also in 
" L'Histoire de la Gaule sous la domination romaine," by A. Thierry, 
Vol. II. p. 174. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 43 

Secunda, for Irenseus speaks of the faith of the two 
Germanies.* 

The Churches of proconsular Africa, of Spain, of 
Italy, and of Southern Gaul, constitute, at this period, 
the Western Church, so different in its general type 
from the Eastern. With the exception of Irenasus and 
Hippolytus, who represent the oriental element in Gaul 
and at Rome, the Western Fathers are broadly distin- 
guished from those of the East. Accepting the same 
doctrinal basis, they differ altogether in their bias, bent 
of thought, and mode of expression. They affirm 
rather than demonstrate; their will is stronger than 
their logic ; they prefer practical to speculative questions. 
The system of episcopal authority is gradually de- 
veloped with the larger amount of passion at Carthage, 
with the greater prudence and patience' in Italy. But 
it is already evident that as Rome conquered Greece 
with all its wealth of thought, so the Western Church 
will gain the ascendancy over the Eastern, appropriat- 
ing all its intellectual treasures. The hour for this 
victory is, however, as yet far distant, and in the age of 
liberty we are now considering — which knows nothing 
of an unreal unity, though insensibly drifting towards 
it — the essential differences between the two Churches 
are still broadly marked. 

(c) Conquests of the Church in Western Gaul and in 
Qcrmany. 

. Beside the countries which had been at once subdued 
and assimilated by Rome, there remained vast tracts of 
land which were indeed included within the material 
boundaries of the empire, but which were, so to speak, 

* Irenaeus, " Contr. Haeres./' Vol. I. 3. 



44 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

beyond its moral limits, inasmuch as they continued 
alien to its civilisation. Such was Britain, and such 
were some remote parts of western Gaul ; the yoke was 
upon them, but they had not yet bowed under it. 
Beyond the limits of the Roman dominion, in the vast 
forests of Germany, a young race, valiant and earnest 
in spirit, was preparing for a great destiny. It was the 
dark cloud, hardly rising above the far horizon, and 
yet prophetic of coming and terrible storms. Already 
this menace of the future had been perceived by the 
keenly politic emperors, and they were on the alert and 
vigilant. A profound instinct warned them that peril 
was there. These barbarous people were destined to do 
more than sweep, with the besom of destruction, the face 
of the old world ; they were not only to raze, but to 
build. Christianity was to find in them its most con- 
genial abode, and among them it was to create a new 
society, young, like itself, and eminently adapted to 
receive its influence. It was a memorable moment 
therefore, in history, when the Gospel was first carried 
to these barbarous nations. 

Before Caesar's conquest, Gaul* was divided into 
four parts: ist. Aquitania, bounded on the east and 
north by Germany, on the south and west by the 
Pyrenees and the ocean. The Aquitanians and Ligu- 
rians who inhabited this region came from Iberia, the 
former driving the latter down upon Southern Gaul. 
2nd. Belgica, which was comprehended between the 
Seine and the Garonne. The Belgae were Cimbri ; 
they were driven into Gaul by the frequent expulsion of 

* See " Les Gaulois," by Amedee Thierry, 4th edit., 1857 ; 
" La Gaale sous la domination romaine," by the same. " Histoire 
de France," Vol. I., by Henri Martin. "Histoire de l'Eglise de 
France," by Abbe Guettee, Vol. I. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 45 

their race from the lands between the Euxine and the 
Danube. 3rd. The settlement of the Galli or Celts, who 
belonged to the same race. They had been brought into 
Gaul by an earlier invasion, and occupied a line of 
country which, commencing from the mouth of the 
Tarn, followed first that stream and then the Rhone, the 
Isere, the Alps, the Rhine, the Vosges, the Loire, and 
finally rejoined the Garonne. 4th. The Phocasan colony, 
the capital of which was Marseilles, on the shores of 
the Mediterranean. 

Gaul, after its conquest by Cassar, was divided by 
Augustus into four provinces : 1st. The old Roman 
province which was called Narbonensis. 2nd. Aqui- 
tania, which was enlarged, and extended from the 
Pyrenees to the Loire. 3rd. Belgica, which included 
the whole of the north ; and 4th. Celtica, or Lugdu- 
nensis, occupying the whole centre of the country 
enclosed by the Loire, the Rhone from Lyons, the Rhine 
and the Marne, the Seine and the sea. 

We have already spoken of the success of Christian 
missions in the central part of Gaul (Lugdunensis), 
which became a second Italy, so complete was the 
appropriation of Roman civilisation. We have, then, 
now only to trace the progress of Christianity in the 
west and north of Gaul. Here the old nationality was 
more strongly retained. The Gauls, an ardent and 
impulsive race, full of life and fervour, great talkers 
and great fighters, were passionately fond of action. 
Adventures and perils were their delight. Distant 
expeditions had an irresistible charm for them. They 
had founded a republic in Asia ; Italy, before it brought 
them into subjection, had been made to feel their yoke. 
Their curiosity was insatiable ; and Cassar tells us how 
they would stop travellers to hear from them some new 



46 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

thing.* Fond of display, brilliant in everything, they 
attired themselves in gay colours, and their graphic 
and fervid speech was in harmony with the crimson 
tunic which they affected. Divided into numberless 
tribes, they had a thousand opportunities to gratify 
their warlike passion, and among them war knew 
neither truce nor end. The Roman administration did 
not succeed in subduing to its own type this strongly 
marked nationality, which still retained a persistent 
life, and boldly broke through the monotony of the 
imperial code. The further, however, we advance to 
the west and north, the more of gravity do we find in 
the Gallic race. In these regions the Druidical system 
assumed a definite form. The religion of the ancient 
Gauls was originally a rude and simple naturalism, like 
all the Eastern religions. t They brought it from the 
cradle of the Indo-Germanic race, of which they were 
one of the branches. The forces of nature were at 
first worshipped without symbols of any kind ; then, 
rising one step, the polytheism of the Gauls personified 
them after the manner of the Vedas. Taranis was the 
spirit of thunder, the Indra, or the celestial Jupiter, 
the god of heaven. The sun was adored under the 
name of Bel, or Belenus. There were special divi- 
nities of the Vosges and the Alps. The god of 
war was called Hesus. Teutates represented the 
Greek Mercury, the swift messenger-god. Such was 
the popular polytheism, which, aiter the Roman con- 
quest, became confounded with Greco-Roman paganism, 
and lost its original character. 

But, side by side with this current of common tra- 
dition, we trace another stream both deeper and purer. 

* Caesar, " Bella Gall.," IV. 15. 

t See Amedee Thierry, "Histoiredes Gaulois," Vol. I. pp. 475-490. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 47 

That dogma of oriental mythology, which is the common 
basis of all the old religions, is not discarded : it is only 
elaborated and refined upon. It undergoes a trans- 
formation analogous to that which we have indicated 
in the religion of the Vedas, when the Indians, having 
come down from the heights of the Himalayas, 
reached the shores of the Ganges. The Druids are the 
Brahmins of the West ; the system developed by them 
has more than one feature of resemblance with the 
exalted pantheism of the far East. It is, however, 
distinguished by a less contemplative, less ascetic 
character. Its doctrines tend rather to the renewal 
than to the annihilation of being. Its religious 
ideas bear the impress of a warlike race, growing up 
under the influences of a climate favourable rather to 
vigorous action than to the slumberous reveries of India. 
Much talk has lately been made about Druidism. Men 
have spoken of it as a sort of anticipation of the true 
religion, as the rudimentary form of that more perfect 
faith, after which the heart of man had so long 
sighed, and as well adapted to renew in our day 
the youth of a decrepit world.* Without entering into 
a discussion, which would be here out of place, we will 
simply show what the Druidic religion was, not ac- 
cording to uncertain documents, in which it is impos- 
sible to distinguish between the original text and 
commentaries and additions derived from Christianity, 
but according to the incomplete but sure testimony 01 
the historians of antiquity. t 

* See the article, " Druidisme," in the " Encyclopedic Nouvelle," 
by M. Jean Reynaud. See also the interesting pages devoted to 
this subject, by M. Henri Martin, in his " Histoire de France," 
Vol. I. pp. 48-54. 

t M. Jean Reynaud and his disciples have taken as the basis of 
their estimate of Druidism, the old Breton songs collected and 



-t 



S THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 



Druidism lays down, as a first principle, the eternity 
of matter and of spirit. The universe is perpetually 
renewed by water and by fire. Man shares in this immor- 
tality of all beings. " Souls, according to the Druids," 
says Strabo, " are immortal as the world." " Their 
first desire," adds Caesar, " is to establish that souls do 
not perish, but that after this life they pass into other 
bodies."* Beyond our world there opens another 
world, like ours, but more beautiful, in which, under a 
new form, the soul preserves its identity. Its existence 
is there carried on under conditions which differ ac- 
cording to the degree of merit. 

The Druids held that a close link bound the 
survivors to the departed. The flame of the funeral 
pile brought tidings from the land of souls, and letters 
were cast into the fire, which the dead man was to 
read in the other world, or to transmit to souls already 
glorified. t The idea of solidarity was largely developed 
among the Gauls. The life of one man might be re- 
deemed by that of another. Hence voluntary sacrifices 
were frequent. The Druids practised magic with its 
worst attendant superstitions. The mistletoe played 
an important part in their rites ; growing upon the oak, 
the tree of peculiar sanctity, they believed it to possess 
exceptional virtue. They also looked for omens in the 
agonies of the prisoners who were sacrificed, or rather 

published by M. Pictet. of Geneva ; but it is impossible to accept 
these as representing Druidism in its primitive form. We feel in 
every line that the breath of Christianity has been upon it. As 
well might we study Parseeism in the " Bundehesch," as study the* 
ancient religion of Gaul in the "Triads." M. Henri Martin himself 
admits that these have undergone many alterations. (Vol. I. p. 75.) 

* 'A(p9dpT0VQ XeyovcTL tciq \pvxag icai rbv Koafiov. (Strabo, Bk. IV. 
p. 197.) "In primis hoc volunt persuadere non interire animas." 
(Ccesar, "Bella Gall," IV. 14, VI. 14-) 

f Diodorus of Sicily, "Historia," V. 28, 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 49 

consumed by thousands in the wicker colossus into 
which they were thrown. 

The priesthood among the Druids was of three orders. 
The bards or singers constituted the first ; the Ovates, 
a description of Levites, charged with the sacrifices, 
formed the second ; and the Druids, or guardians of the 
oaks, the third, or highest order. These, as the guardians 
of tradition, as prophets and instructors, formed the 
teaching body. " They were philosophers and theo- 
logians," says Diodorus Siculus.* " Their elevated 
dignity was due," says Ammianus Marcellinus, " to 
their elevation of mind, to their devotion to subjects the 
most profound and sublime." t To them is owing the 
development of Gallic polytheism into a system. Their 
teaching, which was entirely verbal, was also rhyth- 
mical, so as to be the more readily retained. 

Such are the principal features of the Druidic religion. 
More than this can be said of it only by venturing on the 
ground of pure hypothesis. To admit, according to an 
inscription discovered in the twelfth century, on a sub- 
terranean altar beneath Notre Dame at Paris, that the 
Druids worshipped in Hesus one supreme god, veritably 
distinct from the world, and answering to the Jehovah 
of the Old Testament,]: is to build up a magnificent 
system on an isolated and very fragile foundation-stone. 
Is it not also a forcing of interpretation to see, in the 
mistletoe creeping over the oak — the tree of Hesus — the 
symbol of the finite creature supported by the Universal 
Being, but not absorbed by Him ? What might not be 
found in the numberless fables of ancient mythology by 

* *in\6ffo<poi teal 6to\oyoi. (Diod. Sic, V. 31.) 
f " Druidi, ingeniis celsiores, quaestionibus occultarum rerum 
akarumque erecti sunt." (Amm. Marcell., Bk. XV. c. 9.) 
X Henri Martin, Vol. I. p. 57. 



50 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

such a process ? To discern, in the voluntary human 
sacrifices, a noble faith in immortality, arid to liken the 
systematic slaughter of captives to the destruction of 
the nations of Canaan, is unwarrantably to extenuate 
the worst aspect of Druidism, without succeeding in 
commending it to the conscience. We cannot subscribe 
to the conclusion of a learned historian, when he says : 
"Our fathers represent, in the Celtic world, the most 
steadfast and clearest conception of immortality ever 
realised."* Without denying the grand features of 
Druidism, and while fully admitting its superiority to 
Brahminism in all that is manly and vigorous, we yet 
fail to see anything truly spiritual in a doctrine which 
terminates in metempsychosis and proclaims the 
eternity of matter. Druidism is no more exempt than 
the other religions of the old world, from the dualism 
which keeps them all outside the domain of the moral 
and the spiritual. Salvation, realised by man's transit 
through various successive forms of being, is still sal- 
vation, accomplished by man himself, either by strength 
or by merit of his own. Of the most characteristic 
doctrine of Christianity, there is not even a glimpse. 
Valerius Maximus defined Druidism with entire exact- 
ness, when he called it a new Pythagorism.t It has both 
the greatness and the deficiencies of the Pythagorean 
system ; and when we strip it of all which it borrowed 
from Christianity during the first centuries of our era, 
we see it in its true character, as* a combination of 
monstrous errors with genuine aspirations. The 
horrible and barbarous nature of its sanguinary rites, 
and that craving after an infinite expiation which 
prompted such a multiplication of human sacrifices, 

* Henri Martin, Vol. I. p. 80. 

f " Idem senserunt quod Pythagoras." (Valerius Maximus, II. 9.) 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 51 

forcibly testify to the consciousness of its own 
insufficiency. Like other idolatrous religions, it 
prepared the way for its Divine successor, not by 
anticipating the solution of the great religious problem 
set forth in it, but by stimulating the demands of 
conscience. The slight glimpses it gave of a future 
life are of value only as thus regarded ; for, considered 
as a system, Druidism totters, like all dualistic 
pantheism, and is unsound from its very foundation. 

Western and northern Gaul did not receive the 
Gospel until the third century. The apostolic origin 
of Christianity in those countries is a purely fabulous 
tradition. Legend has confounded Gaul with Galatia, 
into which province we find St. Paul sending Crescens, 
one of his travelling companions, a short time before 
his death.* Hence has arisen the tradition that the 
messenger of the great Apostle landed on the shores 
of Gaul. It is possible that as early as the second 
century, some vague reports of the new religion may 
have been carried beyond Gallia Lugdunensis, since 
Irenseus mentions the Celts among the nations which 
had heard the Gospel. t Communications had become 
easy by the broad highway crossing the country. 
Amedee Thierry says : " Gaul, under the Roman 
administration, presented much the same spectacle 
as North America fifty years ago ; great cities rising 
on the ruins of poor villages or of rude fortifications ; 
Roman and Greek art unfolding its treasures in places 
only yet half civilised ; roads furnished with relays 
of horses, stores, and halting-places for the troops ; 
inns for travellers crossing forests of ages' growth ; 
fleets of commerce sailing in all directions on the 
Rhone, the Loire, the Garonne, the Seine, and the 

* 2 Tim. iv. 10. f Iren£eus, " Contr. Hseres.," Vol. I. 3. 



52 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Rhine, bringing in foreign commodities, and carrying 
away the products of the country." * This great 
current of commerce could hardly fail to bring about 
an intercommunication of ideas and beliefs all over 
the land. It was not, however, until the reign 
of Decius that important Churches were founded in 
western and northern Gaul. Seven missionaries left 
Rome at that period to carry the Gospel into those 
countries. Trophimus alone remained in the south, 
and settled at Aries. Gatian went to Tours, Paul 
to Narbonne, Saturnin to Toulouse, Stremonius to 
Clermont, Martial to Limoges, and Dionysius to Paris. t 
So abundant are the legends that no reliable in- 
formation is to be obtained about this mission. We 
may conclude, however, from this very profusion of 
mythic story embodying the popular feeling, that 
the mission was attended with marked success. It 
is probable that each of the seven emissaries was 
a sort of missionary captain, accompanied by several 
Christians. Thus the Church at Bourges was founded 
by a disciple of Stremonius. Its foundation took 
place under very interesting circumstances, which 
may well have occurred also in other cities. A rich 
citizen of the town, named Leocadius, having forsaken 
paganism for the Gospel, gave his house to the 
missionaries, to be used for purposes of worship. J 
Dionysius was the most active apostle of the Gauls. 
From Lutetia (Paris), where he resided, and where he 
suffered martyrdom, he sent missionaries into all the 
neighbouring districts, § and widely extended the empire 

* Amedee Thierry, " Les Gaulois," Vol. I. p. 352. 

f Gregory of Tours, " Historia Franciae," Vol. I. c. xxx. 

I Ibid., c. xxix. 

§ According to M. Edmond le Blanc, the crypt discovered in 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 53 

of Christianity. Some of his companions carried the 
Gospel into the north of Gaul. History gives us 
no more positive information as to the first propagation 
of the faith in western Gaul. 

The British Isles, divided from Gaul by some leagues 
of sea, observing the same religion, and subjected 
also to the Roman yoke — first nominally in the 
time of Caesar, and then with terrible reality under 
Claudius — received Christianity at the same time. 
Tertullian speaks of it as planted in Britain.* 
" The Isles of Britain," says Chrysostom, " lying 
beyond our seas, in the very heart of ocean, have 
experienced the power of the Word, and churches and 
altars have been there erected." t So considerable 
an establishment of religion seemed to imply previous 
missions. An attempt has been made to trace these 
as far back as to St. Paul, according to the famous 
passage in Clement of Rome, which speaks of the 
Apostle as going to the uttermost parts of the west. 
But no certain conclusion can be drawn from these 
vague terms. "We have no positive statement as to 
the first introduction of Christianity into these countries. 
The conversion of the king Lucius, which is supposed 
to have favoured its progress, is not confirmed by any 
primitive testimony. We can only infer from the fact 
that Easter was long celebrated in the Churches of 
Great Britain according to the practice in Asia Minor, 

1611, at Montmartre, under the chapel of a convent, and now filled 
up, had received the bones of the martyr. The inscriptions and 
emblems with which this crypt was filled, carry us back to the 
third century, by their similarity to the symbolism of the catacombs. 
(/' Inscriptions chretiennes de la Gaule. ;; Vol. I. pp. 273-276.1 

* " Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita." 
(Tertullian, " Contr. Judaeos." c. vii.) 

f Kal yap al BperaviKai vi)aoi iv avri^ ovaai ry 'QKeciKjJ. (John 
Chrysostom, "Oratio quod Christus Deus," Vol. I. p. 7.) 



54 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

that the Gospel had been brought to the Britons by 
Christians from the East.* 

Germany also received Christianity in the fourth 
century. Under the very elastic name of Germany, 
antiquity comprised the country lying between the 
Rhine on the west, the German Ocean on the north, 
the Danube on the south, and the Vistula on the east. 
The people inhabiting this region may be divided into 
two great sections, ist. The Scandinavians, occupying 
the whole of the north. 2nd. The Franks and 
Germans on the shores of the Rhine, and the Goths 
on the lower Danube. These several nations belonged 
to the same type, with slight variations between the 
south and north, and possessed the same social or- 
ganisation, and the same religion. t Tall in stature, 
fair-haired and blue-eyed, the German is endowed with 
prodigious strength. He seems a barbarian to the 
enervated and dissolute inhabitant of Italy or Southern 
Gaul. Nevertheless, this barbarian, in the heart of 
his deep forests, beneath a sky so sad and sullen, as 
Tacitus observes, to all but its own children, has 
already achieved for himself some of the most im- 
portant conquests of a more advanced civilisation. 
His family relations are established on a solid basis ; 
woman holds a high rank in the regard of her people. 
She is no slave, the sport of a domestic tyrant, having 
no rights, no opinions, no high and noble affections ; she 
is truly the wife and mother. She has the noble 
passions of patriotism ; she is the companion of the 

* For the early history of Christianity in England see the 
venerable Bede's history. Blumhardt, in his translation, gives too 
much credence to local traditions, linking them skilfully together, 
but without at all establishing their authenticity. 

•f- The great authority for the general characteristics of the 
Germans is Tacitus. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 55 

warrior, the inspirer of national heroism. She may 
be seen sometimes rallying to the attack a disordered 
and flying troop, and in defeat she manifests a grief 
which is grand, even in its cruel excess, because it is 
disinterested. This respect for woman maintains the 
purity of manners. Adultery was an abomination 
among the Germans, and their severe morality formed 
a striking contrast with the laxity of Roman civilisa- 
tion. Let us on this subject hear the witness of 
Salvian, who is describing the barbarians of the 
invasion, already considerably tainted by the general 
corruption of the times. " We are immoral," he 
says, "among a barbarous people, who are habit- 
ually chaste. I may say more, they are offended 
by our impurities. Adultery is not tolerated by a 
Goth. What hope, I ask, have we before God ? 
We revel in licence, the Goths abhor it. We flee 
purity, they cherish it. Licentiousness is with them 
a crime, with us it is an honour. And we Romans 
think that we can find grace before God, while we 
sanction all sorts of infamy which the barbarians 
repudiate. I ask those who proclaim us to be better 
than the barbarians, to say if that which is an exception 
among them is not an almost universal rule with us ? " * 
The Germans were distinguished by their love of 
liberty. They aimed to secure, not only independence 
of any foreign yoke, but complete freedom in their own 
country. They did not shut themselves up within 
walled towns. Every man possessed his own little 
enclosure. If some traces are to be found, in the organ- 
isation of the tribes, of the system of caste brought from 

* " Quae nobis, rogo, spes ante Deum est ? Impudicitatem 
nos diligimus, Gothi exsecrantur. Puritatem nos fugimus illi amant." 
(Salviani, "De Gubernatione Dei," pp. 222, 223.) 



56 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the East, that system was nevertheless used with large 
freedom. Men voluntarily gathered around one of their 
number, more rich or powerful than the rest. Royalty 
had among them no character of tyranny. The general 
assembly of the nation was sovereign ; it expressed its 
approbation by the clashing of weapons upon the 
shields, and its disapproval by loud murmurs. Under 
this tumultuous form, it maintained the rights of the 
governed in relation to the governing. This assembly 
chose the judges of provinces, and the chiefs w~ho 
were to lead the armies to battle. All these traits of 
national life indicate a genius widely differing from that 
of the southern nations, a genius which, under the in- 
fluence of Christianity, will give us the modern world. 
It is well said by M. Ozanam : " Among the ancient 
peoples of the south, in India, in Greece, and at Rome, 
authority is supreme ; and as authority is the force 
which founds and maintains, these nations have 
covered half the world with their institutions and their 
monuments. But from pushing too far the claims of 
the city, from making a divinity of country, and paying 
to it an idolatrous homage, they went on to declare 
no sacrifice too great for it. Jurisconsults proclaimed the 
maxim, that society has no account to render of its 
decisions. This was the error of the great states of 
antiquity ; they perished from their excess, as all such 
powers must perish. The instinct of liberty fled 
and found a refuge among the Germanic nations."* 
This instinct of liberty explains the incessant struggles 
of these nations against the power of Rome. The 
empire found itself face to face with a nationality which 
could only be broken by force, which would never be 

* Ozanam, " The Germans and the Franks." See also Bunsen, 
"Gott in der Geschichte," Second part, p. 600. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 57 

bent nor assimilated. Rome might conquer by the 
superior organisation of her armies, and the military- 
genius of her generals ; but the spirit of the Germanic 
nation yet remained invincible, and fresh rebellion was 
sure to follow. The conflict always recommenced on 
the doubtful frontier, which separated free Germany 
from the Roman provinces. This formidable warfare 
was carried on from the time of Augustus down through 
the reign of almost all the emperors, and particularly 
under Domitian, Trajan, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus 
Aurelius. At length, in spite of all its resources, in 
spite of its legions, and its traditions of victory, the 
empire was compelled to succumb. Weakened within 
by its own corruption, and sapped by the new religion 
which it thought to crush, it was impossible for it long 
to resist the assaults of a young and valiant race, 
whose free spirit must be enchained, if the world was 
longer to be kept securely under Roman control. The 
apprehension of invasion manifests itself from the close 
of the third century. Tertullian, in his " Apologia," 
speaks of theM arcomanni as inveterate enemies of the 
empire, who, if the Christians had been willing, would 
have given them formidable support against Rome.* 
Commodian, in his " Spicilegium," expresses the same 
opinion about the Goths. f In the course of the third 
century, the invasion of the barbarians was enumerated 
among the periodical scourges of the empire. J 

The apprehension thus entertained was well-founded. 
For the first time, the material power of Rome had 
come into collision with a great moral power. It is 
important to note the principal features of the religion 

* Tertullian, " Apologia," c. xxxvii. 

f " Spicilegium Solemnense," Vol. I. p. 53. 

j Arnobius, "Adv. Gentes," I. 4 14. 

5 



58 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which had tempered men of such a mould.* The Ger- 
manic tribes, like the Pelasgi, brought with them from 
the East, the brilliant and simple naturalism which is 
the common patrimony of the great race to which they 
belong. With the Germans, however, it soon underwent 
a very sensible transformation, and received the impress 
of their grave and thoughtful character. Their rough, 
ungenial climate, saved them from the fascination 
wrought by the luxuriance of nature under Asiatic skies, 
from the spell of that perfidious Maia, the irresistible 
enchantress of India, who, after raising that country 
to the most exalted pantheism, let it sink, by the 
force of re-action, into the depths of annihilation, the 
absolute void, the Nirvana of Buddhism. The Germans 
had not that inexhaustible fertility of the Indian 
imagination, which, combined with rare dialectic skill, 
gave birth to so many ingenious fables. Nor, bar- 
barians as they had ever been, were they under the 
temptation to create, like the Greeks, an aesthetic 
religion, the first element of which should be the 
worship of the beautiful in human form. They had 
no great poets, nor gifted artists to call up before 
them an ideal of beauty, either in enchanted words or in 
marble ; the heavy clouds which darkened their sky 
had never opened to disclose to their charmed gaze the 
luminous palaces of the gods, drinking ambrosia on a 
new Olympus. No ; those clouds hung over their 
horizon a perpetual mourning veil. There is an inex- 
pressible sadness in their mythology ; but this consti- 

* See *M. Krafft's very conscientious work entitled, " Die 
Kirchengeschichte der Germanischen Volker," Vol. I. Edit. I., 
1854. See also the analysis of the " Edda," in the " Tableau de 
la Litterature du nord au moyen age en Allemagne et en Angleterre 
en Scandinavie et en Slavonie par Eickhoff." Paris, 1831. Ozanam, 
"The Germans and the Franks." Bunsen, "Gott in der r^erbirht^." 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 59 

tutes, in truth, its peculiar merit. Inferior poetically, 
and as the learned or graceful rendering of popular 
legends, it is superior as the expression of the cravings 
of conscience. A breath of moral life stirs and animates 
it. The nations which were destined best to represent 
Christianity in the world had need of this severe train- 
ing. Christianity was to reach, in them, its most sure 
abiding-place — the individual conscience. 

We discover, in the religion of the Germanic tribes, as 
in all the ancient religions, a double current; a material- 
istic tendency, side by side with a tendency more noble 
and moral. In a worship, the basis of which was, after 
all, the worship of nature, vulgar minds could always find 
means to protect and sanction their grosser instincts. 
They attached themselves to those elements in religion 
which responded best to their bias and desires. Thus 
they gave prominence to the ferocious and warlike aspect 
of Odin and Thor, and the goddess Freya became to 
many, the German Venus. The Romans were especially 
struck with the points of resemblance between the 
religion of these barbarous people and their own worship. 
They spoke of their gods simply in this aspect. In Odin 
they saw their own Mercury, and in Thor their Mars.* 
Tacitus, who caught a glimpse of the higher side of 
the German national character, yet failed to discern 
the purer and less apparent religious thought, which lay 
concealed from the eyes of strangers, beneath the rude 
forms of the popular religion. Like Caesar, he saw the 
naturalism of the Germans, embodied in the adoration 
of Hertha, or the earth ; but he also utterly failed to see 
that which lay beneath. Of the deepest and most 
characteristic features of the Germanic mythology, he 

* Ozanam, " The Germans and the Franks," Vol. I. pp. 42-55. 



60 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

had no conception.* Recent discoveries, due in great 
measure to the Brothers Grimm, have given us an 
insight into these hidden beliefs, which were the in- 
spiring thought of a whole body of ancient legends, 
preserved in Iceland, under the name of the Eddas. 
It is now proved that these legends, in their most 
ancient form, existed prior to Christianity. 

History and cosmogony are plainly blended in this 
mythology. The conflict between the powers by which 
the world was formed, points to the wars waged by the 
Germanic people in the far past. This occasions in- 
extricable confusion; but it is nevertheless easy _ to 
discern the characteristic features of the Germanic 
religion. We cannot go over its fables in detail ; we 
shall simply direct attention to the main points. Ac- 
cording to the Edda, an invisible intelligence presided 
over the formation of the world, and directed it. The 
world hung upon the empty void, before any creature 
was called into being. A fountain gushed from the 
North Pole, and froze into an enormous mass of ice. 
This ice, softened by the burning rays, darted from the 
South Pole, formed the huge body of the great Ymir, 
the image of Chaos, from which are born the giant of 
the hoar-frost and the giant of the flames. These vast 
creations symbolise the unchained and destructive 
elements, which come forth from the bosom of Chaos, 
and wage desperate warfare till order and harmony are 
restored. The supreme intelligence causes the cow 
Audumbla to arise, which, by licking the ice from 
which it derives its nourishment, models in some 
manner all the parts of a gigantic body; the hair, the 
head, the members are thus formed. This new giant 

* Caesar, " De Bella Gall.," I. 50. Tacitus, " Germania," VIII., 
and " Historia," IV. p. 61. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 6l 

is called Bur. He has a son named Bor, who is the 
father of Odin, Vil, and Loder, the triple personifica- 
tion of life, light, and heat. These three brothers slay 
Ymir, and, with the fragments of his body, compose 
the various parts of the universe. 

Nine spheres are thus formed : those of light, of fire, of 
theAsesor gods, of the Vanes or gnomes, of men, of giants, 
of dwarfs, of darkness, and lastly of ice, in which dwell 
the infernal monsters. The universe thus formed has 
for its emblem the tree Ydrahill, which casts its roots 
into the deep and frozen abyss, while its shining top is 
crowned with stars. Man was formed by the Ases or 
gods. His enemies are the dwarfs and giants which 
symbolise the blind material forces of Nature. The 
principal god is Odin, the great warrior. His sons are 
many; we mention only Thor, the personification of 
fierce valour, and Baldur, the god of peace. Odin is 
the father of many other divinities, which are only im- 
personations of various natural or moral powers. There 
is continual war between the giants and the dwarfs. 

In these incongruous fables, we discern one grand 
idea — faith in an invisible spirit, the supreme ruling 
principle of the world. If dualism is not vanquished, 
it is yet undeniable that an important part is assigned 
in creation to the invisible spirit. He it is who calls 
forth the power of organisation, and gives form to the 
beings which emerge from a shapeless chaos. Again, 
the distinction between purely natural powers and 
powers of a moral nature, is sharply drawn. The Ases 
or gods are clearly distinguished from the giants and the 
dwarfs, their eternal enemies ; man is privileged to have 
the former as his defenders, the latter as his adversaries. 

The peculiar originality and beauty of the Germanic 
mythology does not lie, however, in this cosmogony, 



62 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

singular as it is, like all popular legend, as to the 
origin of the world. That by which this mythology is 
distinguished from every other, is the deep conscious- 
ness it reveals of the Fall, and the universality which it 
assigns to it. Not men alone have fallen, but the gods 
also. The Germans include their very divinities in the 
great shipwreck of the Fall, and thus boldly avow the 
insufficiency of their polytheism. After a brief age of 
gold, the gods suffer themselves to be vanquished by 
the giants and the dwarfs. Locki, the perfidious giant, 
binds them in his snares. He leads them into a fatal 
alliance ; and Baldur, the pacific hero, the god of peace 
and love, pays with his death the price of this accursed 
union. Thus the moral powers are vanquished by the 
material. Religious feeling has lost its primitive purity. 
The gods worshipped in the present era are only fallen 
gods; religion itself bears the marks of the Fall. When 
did the conscience of man ever make a more significant 
admission, or express more forcibly its yearnings after 
the religion of the future ? The Edda paints in strik- 
ing colours that dark age of universal decay, which set 
in after the fall of the gods. The decease of Baldur, 
the pacific hero, introduced the age of death and con- 
demnation. " Afterthe death of Baldur, all creatures 
wept, and the trees and rocks wept with them. Only 
one daughter of the giants would not weep ; and, since 
the redemption of Baldur from death required the tears 
of every creature, he remained among the dead."* 
What a grand conception, which leaves to the fallen 
creature no other part in the work of his restoration 
than to weep his fall! This sorrowful period was to 
last for three winters. Mankind has not yet passed 
through the first. Its whole present history is in truth 
# Ozanam, "The Germans and the Franks," Vol. I. p. 36. 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 63 

but one pale winter, dark and desolate, wrapping a 
winding-sheet round every joy, quenching all bright- 
ness, freezing to the very heart. The braves who fought 
the fight for Odin are transported to the Valhalla, the 
intermediate abode, where they carry on their warlike 
sports, and prepare for the combats of the future. 

There is, in truth, in reserve for the world, one final 
crisis. " The good tree Ydrahill will quiver in ex- 
pectation of the threatening woes. The serpent twined 
around it will writhe with rage. The wolf Fenrir, the 
emblem of destruction, will break his chains and 
devour the moon; the stars will be darkened. The 
giants will enter on a terrible struggle with the gods. 
Odin will be vanquished. The earth will be plunged 
beneath the ocean ; the stars will be quenched, and the 
fire will mount up to heaven. It will be the night of 
the gods." But this night will be followed by a morn- 
ing. A brighter sun will shine upon a renovated earth. 
A man and a woman who have escaped the fearful 
destruction will give birth to a renewed humanity ; a 
new god, the son of Baldur, will reign over the re- 
generated world. This new god is the object of the 
expectation and ardent desire of the Germanic peoples. 
" One day," say they in their songs, " will come a god 
mightier than Odin ; but his name may not be said."* 
Thus the hymn to the unknown god rises from sombre 
Germany as from brilliant Athens, and the barbarians 
join with the Greeks in calling for him. Let us re- 
cognise in these universal accents, the same voice of 
the human conscience, ever asking after God. " There 
is a mystery," eloquently observes Ozanam, " which 

* " Einst kommt ein anderer machtiger als er. Doch ihn zu 
namen wag ich nicht." (Krafift, " Die Kirchengeschichte der Ger- 
manischen Volker," p. 211.) 



U4 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

for six thousand years has engaged the thoughts of the 
world, and which is the basis of all religions. Conflict, 
the fall, redemption, these are the first elements of all 
alike ; all beyond is secondary, only various readings 
and episodes of the same theme." " Thus humanity 
has ever sung its own story ; it has presented to itself 
no other spectacle than that of its ancient griefs ; and 
I cease to wonder that it has never wearied of the same. 
It loves to see and touch its wounds, even if it opens 
them afresh ; and hence it is we find a pleasure in 
poetry, and are not satisfied unless it is full of tears."* 
Neither the Athenians nor the Romans had at all 
the same sorrowful sense as the Germans of man's 
fallen estate, of that desolate winter of humanity, that 
night of the gods, which is lighted only by one im- 
mortal hope, like the star which heralds the dawn. 
This earnest race was thus singularly prepared to 
receive the Gospel. But it was not till the next 
century that Christianity really found its way to the 
hearts of the Germanic peoples, and then they received 
it for a time in the mutilated form of Arianism. They 
were not passed by, however, in the great missionary 
movement of the third century. A bishop of the 
Goths sits in the Council of Nicasa ; t and Sozomen, 
whose account is corroborated by Philostorgius, tells 
us that some Christian captives had spread their faith 
among these barbarous tribes. He says: "The Goths 
and the races bordering on the Danube, having already 
received the Christian faith, became more gentle and 
humane in their manners." J These barbarous people 
learned to know the Gospel through the wars per- 

* Ozanam, " The Germans and the Franks," Vol. I. p. 224. 
t M De Gothis." Theophilus Bosphoritanus, 



BOOK I. — CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 65 

petually waged against them by the Romans under 
Gallienus and his successors ; for in those times, a great 
multitude of barbarians of all nations, having thrown 
themselves from Thrace upon Asia, and ravaged it, 
and others having attacked the Romans on their own 
frontiers, many Christians, and even some priests, 
were brought among them as prisoners. These healed 
the sick and demoniacs by naming the name of Christ, 
and calling upon the Son of God ; their life was ex- 
emplary, and their virtues disarmed hostility. The 
barbarians were filled with admiration of their holiness 
and their wonderful works, and they thought it must 
be the path of wisdom, and agreeable to God, for them 
to imitate those whom they saw to be better than 
themselves, and to embrace their religion. They asked 
the Christians what they ought to do, and after being 
instructed by them, they received holy baptism, and 
then took their place in the Church of Christ.* 
Christianity was introduced in the same manner 
in the provinces of the Rhine, f We find Maternus, 
Bishop of Treves, sitting in the Council of Nicaea. 
The Church of Cologne yielded many martyrs 
in the persecutions of the third century. The 
greater number of the cities situated on the river 
received Christianity, as we find by the inscriptions 
on gravestones, the date of which is determined by 
their resemblance to those of the catacombs. Many 
are engraved in Greek characters, from which we 
conclude that the Gospel was brought into these 
regions by Christians from the East. J 

* Sozomen, " H. E." Bk. II. c. 6. _ Philostorgius, Vol. II. c. 5. 

f Rdr] yap ra ts a/x0? rbv pr\vov 0v\a exptoridvi^uv. (Sozomen, 
«H. E.,"Bk. II. c. 6.) 

t See Edmond Blanc, " Inscriptions chretiennes de la Gaule," 
Vol. V. pp. 327, 396, 421. 



66 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

All the countries bordering on Gaul also embraced 
the Christian faith. It is impossible to vouch for 
the authenticity of a single one of the innumerable 
details given in the "Acts of the Martyrs" of these 
missions. Their success, however, is beyond dispute. 
It appears to have been very marked in Helvetia. 
There we find the same race and the same religion 
as in Gaul. The only traces we have of the spread 
of the Gospel in these countries, are some fragments 
of funereal inscriptions, which clearly bear the im- 
press of the new faith. The Roman armies, which 
constantly passed through Helvetia, included large 
numbers of Christians in their ranks. These left 
traces of their transit. The famous legend, according 
to which an entire legion, named the Theban Legion, 
was put to death in the Valais, for refusing to forsake 
the standard of Christ, rests probably upon- some 
authentic facts, largely exaggerated by the popular 
imagination. * Geneva, in the course of the second 
century, received within its walls some missionaries 
sent from the Church at Vienna, which was founded 
in Southern Gaul at the same time as the Church of 
Lyons. We have no other positive information as 
to the first introduction of Christianity into Helvetia. 
The local traditions are all of a legendary character. t 

Such were the conquests of the Church in the East 
and West during these two centuries. We must now 
follow her through the sanguinary conflicts, at the cost 
of which these triumphs were won. 

* We shall allude again to this in the history of the persecutions. 

t See " L'Histoire ecclesiastique de la Suisse sous les Romains, 
les Burgondes et les Allemands, " by Glepke. See also " L'Histoire 
des origines du christianisme Suisse," by Ch. Dubois, Neuchatel, 



CHAPTER II. 

GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE PERSECUTIONS OF THE 
SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES. 

Imprisonment, Trial, and Condemnation of the Christians. 

Before we begin to trace rapidly the history of each 
of the great persecutions which burst forth in the 
second and third centuries, we shall do well to form 
a clear idea of the nature of the persecutions in general, 
of the various occasions which called them forth, of 
the track in which persecution moved, and of its 
results for good and evil in the Church. By grouping 
the scattered details which we find in the ecclesiastical 
historians of the time, we obtain a picture full of life 
and reality of the glorious endurance of the Christians. 
We may thus follow them into prison and into exile, 
stand by them before the tribunal of the Roman 
magistrates, and on the place of torture. 

The great persecutions are generally enumerated as 
ten. This is, however, an arbitrary division, and we 
must be careful not to take it too literally. It has 
arisen in part from that desire to establish a methodical 
regularity and a certain supposed order of events, 
which often does violence to fact. It would be an 
error to assert that persecution burst forth only ten 
times before the Constantine era. In reality it never 
ceased ; checked at one point, it only flamed forth 
afresh at another. The most prosperous times had 



68 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

their martyrs. It could not be otherwise. Chris- 
tianity, until the fourth century, was an unauthorised 
religion, a religion proscribed and illegal. The decree 
of Trajan, reinforced by many others, was not for a 
single day withdrawn. Persecution was therefore 
always lawful, and did not need a special permission. 
It might become more general and more cruel, ac- 
cording to the disposition of the emperors; but whether 
they were well-affected or otherwise towards the 
Christians, persecution continued to form a part of 
the penal legislation of the empire, and any popular 
tumult, or the mere caprice of the proconsul, sufficed 
to bring it down in all its violence upon a city or 
province. 

In the detailed statement which we shall make of 
the mutual relations of the Church and the empire 
in the second and third centuries, we shall carefully 
point out the special causes of the great persecutions, 
of those, that is, in which the initiative was taken 
by the emperors themselves. For the present, it is 
our aim to bring out rather the characteristic features 
which gave individuality to the persecutions, than to 
study their general and political aspect. We shall 
see in what manner a Christian could sustain the 
sharpness of persecution, whether decreed by the 
emperor or bursting forth spontaneously. We shall 
endeavour to follow the proceedings taken against 
him, and to go through all the phases of his trial and 
imprisonment, even to the sanguinary close.* 

* Beside the ecclesiastical writers of the time, whom we carefully 
quote, we refer for our authorities to the " Acta Martyrum Sincera, ' 
Ruinard Edition, Verona, 1731. We have made use of this with, 
caution, only accepting those statements which are confirmed by 
the Fathers, or whigh, recurring in all the " Acts," acquire a sort 
of authenticity. 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 69 

The position of a Christian in the Roman empire 
was always one of peril, and whatever legitimate 
precautions he might take,, it was still difficult for 
him to escape his enemies. His very attitude and 
his scruples drew down persecution upon him ; it was 
enough for him to abstain from some of the practices 
of pagan life to be at once recognised, and thus he 
became every hour his own betrayer. Tertullian, in 
his treatise on idolatry, gives a faithful representation 
of all the difficulties of the position of a worshipper of 
the true God in the midst of Roman society. He 
shows how the whole life of the Christian was 
enveloped in paganism as in a close network of mail ; 
how he must break the iron snare at every turn if he 
would walk faithfully and uprightly with his God. Every 
step is therefore full of danger, every act implies a 
courageous confession, every deviation from pagan 
custom excites attention and stimulates aversion. The 
Christian is obliged at the outset to abandon all 
branches of industry which have any connection with 
idolatry, such as the making of idols, and the sale of 
victims for the idol sacrifices. The maintenance of the 
pagan worship required a large number of workmen, and 
no branch of labour was more profitable. How many 
of the converts among the lower classes of society had 
formerly thus made their living ! No hesitation was 
suffered in the matter ; a vocation wrong in itself must 
be at once forsaken ; and yet by suddenly abandoning 
it, the man exposed himself to public prosecution.* In 
all probability some former comrade would be found 
ready to denounce him. 

Numberless other incidents of daily life could hardly 
fail to betray the Christian, even should he have been 
* Tertullian, " De Idolatria," IV. VII. 



70 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

less associated, than in the case just supposed, with 
pagan practices previous to his conversion. What 
bitter enmities must he not arouse in order (to use the 
eloquent words of Tertullian) to avoid the breath of 
that plague present in the whole series of superstitious 
observances dedicated to the gods, or to the dead, or 
to kings.* Paganism has its feasts in great number, 
every god has his own festival. These serve as 
measures of time, and, in a manner, mark out the year, 
by their sacred anniversaries. What can the Christian 
do in these cherished popular solemnities ? Shall he 
celebrate the calends of the year, or shall he, following 
the counsel of the stern Carthaginian, weep when the 
age rejoices, that he may rejoice when the age weeps ?t 
If he hold himself aloof from the general gladness, his 
silent protest will be well understood, and will irritate 
popular prejudice. Often the fanatic multitude will 
seek to compel the Christian to take part by an act 
of idolatry in these public solemnities. Thus St. 
Symphorian was thrown into prison for refusing to 
worship the statue of a goddess carried in triumph by 
a numerous procession in the country of the Eduans4 
The most simple social relations were prolific sources 
of conflict between the old and new faiths. The pagans 
were accustomed to invite each other to the sacrifices. 
A converted pagan frequently received such invitations. 
He was bound to refuse, but such a refusal was taken 
as a provocation. The position of a Christian slave 

* " Omnem afflatum pestis in nniversa serie humanae super- 
stitionis, sive deis, sive defunctis, sive regibus mancipatae." (Ter- 
tullian, " De Idolatria," XIII.) 

•j- " Sseculo gaudente lugeamus et saeculo postea lugente gaude- 
bimus" (Ibid.) 

| " Publicae seditionis obtentu comprehensus." (" Acta Mar- 
tyrum," p. 69.) 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 71 

or freed man, whose duties bound him to a pagan 
master, was still more difficult. Any measures were 
lawful against him, and many of the acts commanded 
by his master were forbidden by his God. Hence arose 
incessant perils, and there hung over the Christian the 
ever-impending threat of death.* The common speech 
was deeply tainted with paganism. The forms of 
taking an oath and of giving evidence all acknowledged 
the gods. Thus the Christian was bound to mark 
his separateness from those around him on all occa- 
sions, even in the course of common conversation. 
At the festal table he must keep a strict watch over 
his lips, lest by any long-wonted exclamation, such as 
"By Hercules," he should acknowledge the false gods. 
He would be constrained many a time to make the 
protest of a stern silence, and thus to come perpetually 
into collision with the inveterate prejudices of his 
host or former friends. t This obligation, under which 
the Christians lay, to break with pagan customs, kept 
up a constant dull irritation ; it was a permanent chal- 
lenge repeated on every occasion. 

Family relations were not without danger. The 
Christian woman had much to suffer from her husband, 
when he had not embraced her faith. How could she 
attend in peace to her religious duties, when she was 
dependent on a master who was often a vile despot ? 
How could she go in the evening to the meeting for 
worship, without exciting suspicions ? How could she 
show hospitality to strangers, brethren in the faith ? 
how visit the martyrs in their prisons ? J The Chris- 

* Tertullian, " De Idolatria," XVI. XVII. 

t " Cseterum consuetudinis vitium est Mehercule dicere." (Ter- 
tullian, '■ De Idolatria," XX.) 

\ Tertullian, "Ad uxorem/' II. 4. 



72 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tian wife was anxious to elevate and purify conjugal 
union, so debased by pagan abominations. Her chastity 
was an offence and an insult in the eyes of her husband ; 
and if she would escape infamy, she must be prepared for 
death. Justin, in his first "Apology," relates a cir- 
cumstance, which occurred in his day, and which 
reveals all the sufferings and dangers of a mixed 
marriage at that time. A woman, formerly a pagan, 
desired, after her conversion, to renounce all the shame 
of her former life. She endeavoured to win over her 
husband to her pious design. Her frequent exhorta- 
tions were vain. Feeling it an impiety to live longer 
in such impure associations, she determined, when she 
was convinced that there was no hope of any change 
for the better, to separate from him. In his revenge, 
the husband denounced her as a Christian, and had 
her cast into prison.* 

If private life had its perils, public life was yet more 
dangerous. It was almost impossible for a Christian 
to fulfil any public duty, to be a magistrate or an officer 
in the army. This barrier subsisted even in the case of 
those who did not belong to the most rigid party — 
that which proscribed absolutely any contact with the 
world, and sought to turn the whole Church into a 
monastery. Believers of a broad and tolerant spirit, 
who would have gladly occupied the seat of the judge, 
or held the vine-rod of the centurion's office, found 
themselves embarrassed at every step by some pagan 
practice. There was some oath to take or deliver, or 
it was needful to burn incense before the image of the 
emperor. The customs of military service daily put 
the Christian conscience to the test. A warlike race 

* Akyojv avTrjv xp^Tiavrjv tlvai. (Justin Martyr, " First Apology," 
p. 42.) 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 73 

like the Romans were especially anxious to conciliate 
the gods who presided over battle. 

In war, sacrifices were continually offered with a view 
to secure the most powerful protection. Victory was 
celebrated by idolatrous rites. Nowhere was the 
emperor the object of more adoration than in the camps, 
which were nevertheless ever rife with peril and mutiny. 
The soldiers, who chose to bend the knee one day before 
the god they themselves had placed on the throne or 
on the altar, were no less ready the next to dash their 
idol to fhe ground, and set up another in his place. 
These pagan practices, the iniquitous orders issued to 
armies, which were frequently employed as the instru- 
ments of persecution, the immoralities ever prevalent 
in military life, the inevitable publicity of life in tents, 
which rendered the secret observance of a proscribed 
worship nearly an impossibility — all these causes in 
combination made the position of a Christian soldier 
almost intolerable. He drew all eyes upon himself at 
a time when, for him to be known, was to be doomed. 
In vain might he display heroic courage in fight, and 
unshaken fidelity as a soldier of his country. This very 
fidelity, in the changing fortunes of the empire, was an 
element of peril. It is not surprising, then, that the 
Roman armies should have furnished a large contingent 
to the host of the martyrs. That Christian soldier, of 
whom Eusebius speaks, who, when summoned to offer 
sacrifice to the gods on being appointed centurion, nobly 
renounced at once honour and life, shows, by a living 
example, how incompatible was the profession of the 
faith with the military career. The bishop of the 
Church, to which this courageous confessor belonged, 
placed before him the Holy Scriptures on the one side, 
and a sword on the other, bidding him make his choice. 

6 



74 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

He renounced the sword, though he knew well that by 
so doings he plunged it into his own heart.* This 
necessity of choosing between the Gospel and the sword, 
was often laid upon the Christians, and was not the 
least of their temptations and perils. 

We have already more than once alluded to the 
shameless idolatry which, in these days of universal 
degradation, was more and more generally offered to 
the emperor. The Christian could not, in any way, 
connive at these practices. Fully ready as he was to 
submit to human authority, because he recognised in it 
the presence of a higher law, he could not prostrate 
himself before a fellow man, without renouncing his 
faith in the one living and true God. Humility and 
dignity were blended in his character; the same faith 
which laid him low at the feet of Christ kept him erect 
before man. The worshipper of the Most High 
could not adore, as God, that which was but dust and 
ashes before the Creator. "'Render unto Caesar the 
things which are Caesar's,'" says Tertullian, '"and unto 
God the things which are God's.' Such is the teaching 
of Scripture. What, then, is due to Caesar ? The 
matter in question,, when the words were first spoken, 
was the tribute-money. The Saviour therefore called 
for a piece of money, and asked what was the image 
graven on it ? When the reply was made, The image 
is of Caesar, he rejoined, ' Render therefore unto 
Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the 
things which are God's.' In other words, Caesar's image 
is on the money, therefore the money may be fairly 
claimed by him ; God's image is upon man, and He has 

* To 7rpo(Trjprnnsvov avTLJ} %i<pog eirihi^ag, afxa re avrnrapaTtQ^ai 
irpoaayayiov avry ty}vtwv tftiojv evayycXiwv ypa^yv, KtXturrag tCjv Svolv 

tXkaOai to Kara yvM\ir\v. (Eusebius, " H. E," Bk. VII. c. 15. Com- 
pare VIII. c. 14.) 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 75 

an equal claim upon His own. Give therefore your 
money to Caesar, and yourselves to God. If all is 
Caesar's, what will remain for God?"* No decision 
could have been more complete or clear, but none could 
have struck a severer blow at the social constitution of 
the whole ancient world, or thrown down a broader 
challenge to the powers of the age. It boldly contested 
imperial claims, and no government is so jealous of its 
own unlimited authority, as one which knows it has but 
a short and precarious tenure of power. The Roman 
Caesar demanded absolute submission of the reason, 
will, and life from every one of his subjects. All resis- 
tance was rebellion, and to dispute the divinity of the 
emperor was the worst impiety. The Christians 
could not but come therefore under the condemnation 
of this terrible statute of high treason, and torrents of 
Christian blood proved its unsparing vengeance. The 
"Acts of the Martyrdom" of St. Achates give us a 
vivid picture of a scene that must have been repeated 
many a time in the age of persecution. The proconsul, 
before whom the martyr was brought, addressed him 
thus: "Thou art bound to love our princes, as be- 
comes a man who lives under the Roman law."t " By 
whom," replies the confessor, " is the emperor better 
loved than by the Christians ? We pray perpetually 
that he may enjoy long life, an equitable government, 
peace in his time, prosperity in his armies and in the 
world." " It is well," replied the magistrate ; " but 
that thou mayest better show thine obedience to the 

# " Id est, imaginem Caesaris Caesari, et quae surit Dei Deo ; id est, 
imaginem Dei Deo, quae in homine est, ut Caesari quidem pecuniara 
reddas, Deo temet ips-um. Alioquin, quid erit Dei, si omnia 
Caesaris?" (Tertullian, " De Idolatria," p. 15.) 

t "Debes amareprincipes nostros, homo Romanis legibus vivens." 
("Acta Martyrum," p. 129.) 



76 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

emperor, sacrifice with us to his honour." " I pray to 
my God for the emperor," answered the martyr; "but 
sacrifice in honour of him ought neither to be demanded 
nor presented. How can divine honours be accorded 
to a man?"* The sacrifice, however, was the stern 
requirement, and the Roman laws, to which the pro- 
consul appealed, exacted this homage from every 
subject. To demand such worship from a Christian, 
and craftily to lead him on to a formal refusal of it, was 
to prepare his doom. 

Such was the position of a Christian at this period. 
In private and in public life, in his own house, or at 
the table of friends and acquaintances, in the camp, 
or in the city, he was encompassed with danger. He 
was a victim devoted to the fury of the populace, so 
soon as any trivial circumstance should arouse its 
slumbering ire. 

There were times when this fury of the multitude 
knew no bounds ; on the occasion, for example, of any 
public calamity. An ignorant and fanatic crowd at 
once traced their misfortune to the new religion. 
" What man is there," wrote the Emperor Maximus, 
" so mad as not to acknowledge that it is of the 
goodness of the gods, if the ground withhold not its 
fruits, if sacrilegious war break not forth suddenly, 
if a pestilent air slay not our frail bodies, if the sea 
swell not under tempestuous winds, if the earth — 
mother and nurse of every creature — be not upheaved 
from its depths in terrible convulsions ? None can 
deny that these calamities, and worse than these, 
have come to pass in former times. All these things 
were caused by the poisonous errors and arrant folly 
of these men, who have been the vilest of wretches, 

* " Quis enim sacra homini persolvat." (" Acta Martyrum.") 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 77 

from the first moment when this madness took root 
among them and began to spread, till it has covered 
with shame almost the whole earth." " Let the Tiber 
overflow its banks," we read in Tertullian, " let the 
Nile fail to inundate the country, let the heavens be 
of brass, let the sun be darkened, let famine or 
pestilence visit the land, and at once the cry is raised, 
' The Christians to the lions ! ' " * 

It is not difficult to trace this popular fury to its 
true source. In every persecution raised against the 
truth, we discover the hand of a priest. The "Acts of 
the Martyrs " show us the pagan priests incessantly 
labouring by the most unworthy artifices to deceive 
the people. Their lying oracles are made to speak 
against the religion of Christ. The priest creeps into 
the palace of the prince or of the proconsul, and too 
often succeeds in making him the instrument of 
sacerdotal hatred and vengeance. It is easy to see from 
the captious questionings addressed to the accused, 
that those consummate rogues — the priests — have been 
prompting the magistrate. There is no spectacle more 
hideous than that of brutal force thus placed at the 
disposal of priestly cunning. t It is equally repulsive 
to all sense of fairness, to see base personal jealousies 
wreaking themselves through the medium of persecution. 
The philosopher Crescens having been vanquished in 
public discussion by Justin Martyr, revenged himself 
by a cowardly denunciation of his opponent, and thus 
sought to stifle in blood the voice which he could not 
silence by argument. % An unknown poet, who lived 

* " Si fames, si lues, statim : Christianos ad leonem." (Tertul- 
lian, " Apol.," c. xi.i 

t See the martyrdom of Saint Saturnin, and that of Symphorosa 
and his sons. ("Acta Martyrum," pp. 20-22, no.) 

X Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. IV. c. 16. 



78 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

by his religious reputation, and probably found a good 
market for his pagan rhapsodies, was the instigator of 
the persecution in the metropolis of ancient Egypt in 
the time of Dionysius of Alexandria.* 

Let us now transport ourselves in thought to some 
city of Africa, Asia Minor, or Italy, at the moment 
when persecution is declared. The Christians, who 
during the time of respite had shared in the common life 
of the people, and transacted their business in the Agora, 
now take the utmost precautions to escape malicious 
observation and false accusation. They are scarcely 
permitted to show themselves in any public place. 
"We are not only banished," write the Christians 
of Lyons, "from the baths and the Forum, but we 
are forbidden to appear in any public place what- 
ever." t This is the reign of terror in the Church. 
No retreat, however secluded, can save the persecuted 
from their fierce pursuers. In this drama of persecu- 
tion, the principal actor, the one who fills the whole 
scene, who issues imperious commands, and obtains 
anything at pleasure from the weakness or connivance 
of the magistrates, is the mob. We know to what a 
dangerous extent mob-rule could prevail under imperial 
Rome. The masses are never more powerful than 
when liberty is unrecognised, and the intelligent classes 
of a nation are deprived of their rights. A tyrannical 
power, when it can find no support among the higher 
strata of society, seeks it in the lower, and thus builds 
upon a foundation shifting as the sand, and as ready 
to be whirled hither and thither by the first breath 
of a new impulse. A despot only reigns by serving 

* Kat (^Qaffa^ 6 kcikCjv ry TroXei ravry jiavriQ ical iroir\Tr\Q iKivr/rre ica9' 
rjfxwv ra itXnQt) ru>v Wvojv. (Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. VI. c. 41.) 
f Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. V. c. 1. 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 79 

not the true interests, but the passions of the people ; 
tyranny is always the expression of a twofold mean- 
ness, that of the master who flatters the slave, and 
that of the slave who sells himself to the master. 
Hence the rule of the Roman emperor w r as at once 
the rule of despots and of the mob. Not content 
with the bread thrown to them, and the circus pro- 
vided for their amusement, the populace clamoured 
for the torture of the Christians, and, grown weary of 
the old cry, " Panem et circenses ! " it added this new 
and terrible cry, " Christianas ad leonem!" Persecution 
was in its commencement a popular tumult. The 
excited crowds often burst into the dwellings of the 
Christians, as in the persecution which took place in 
the time of Dionysius of Alexandria. That Father 
says: "We saw the people suddenly burst into our 
dwellings as if by one common impulse. Every 
one entered some house that was known to him, and 
began to spoil and destroy. All objects of value were 
seized ; things not worth carrying away, such as 
wooden furniture, were burnt on the highway. The 
scene was that of a town taken by assault." * The 
same crowd follows the Christians before the tribunal, 
and interferes in the process of inquiry. When the 
Christians of Lyons were brought into the Forum by 
the tribune of the soldiers and the magistrates of the 
city, they were questioned and compelled to reply 
before the whole multitude, which had clamoured for 
their trial, t We read in the "Acts of the Martyrs : " 
" Hardly had the judge taken his seat, when the hall 
of judgment resounded with the furious cries of the 

* Ei9' oixoOv/iaSbv uTravres wpfii]<7av kwl rag twv Oeocrtfiuiv oiKias. 
(Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. VI. c. 41.) 

f 'E7ri TravTog tov 7r\r)9ovg avuKpiQevreq nai ofioXoyrjaavres. (Euse- 

bius, U H. E.,"Bk. V. c. 1.) 



oO THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

populace, raised against the innocent."* More than 
once, sentence was pronounced by the crowd, and 
only ratified by the magistrate. This was the case at 
the martyrdom of Polycarp. "All present lifted their 
voices with one accord, demanding that he should be 
burned alive. The execution followed almost close 
upon the sentence. The wood for the stake, torn in 
an instant from the shops and baths, was carried to 
the fatal spot by eager hands." t The crowd con- 
stituted itself the sole executive in the condemnation 
of the Christians ; it carried through the whole process, 
from the part of the officer who arrests the accused, 
to that of the executioner who makes him a victim, 
while his voice is drowned in furious outcries. Then 
it might seem that its task was done, and that the 
deepest malice might rest satisfied. But no ; once 
more it flung itself upon the body of the victim, and in- 
repeated instances the very ashes were cast into the 
river, that every trace might be obliterated, and the 
work of destruction be complete. J But we will not 
anticipate the story of Christian heroism; and having 
thus indicated the part taken by the populace in the 
condemnation of the confessors, we will follow the trial 
through its various phases. 

More than once, beyond a doubt, the sentence was 
summarily carried out, and the accused was tried and 
put to death on the same day. But, ordinarily, some 
time elapsed between the incarceration and the end. 
We have shown, in speaking of the captivity of St. 
Paul, that the severity of imprisonment might be con- 

* "Accenditur judex et popularis conclamatio attollitur et in 
innocentes simul omnium insania consurgit." 

+ Tavra ovv fxerd tooovtov tuxovi tykvero Quttov i] IXiytro. (Euse- 
bius,"H. E.," Bk IV. c. 15.) 

t Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. V. c. 1. 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 8l 

siderably aggravated or relaxed according to the nature 
of the offence charged. The Christians evidently 
underwent the severest form of treatment as guilty 
of a capital crime. Pagan society, which had no 
compassion for weakness and misfortune, which had an 
ear only for the voice of influence and wealth, treated 
its prisoners as it treated its women, slaves, and chil- 
dren. It had no respect for human nature in itself, 
but regarded only the outward distinctions, which 
are the accidents, not the true dignity of life. The 
prisoner who had no powerful friends to avenge his 
wrongs or exert themselves in his behalf, was thrown 
into a horrible dungeon, often like the Mamertine 
prison, deep down in the bowels of the earth, where 
light and air could scarcely enter.* There he was 
bound in fetters, f miserably fed, often famished. The 
martyrs of Carthage thus describe their sufferings : 
" Doomed to die of hunger and thirst, we have been cast 
into two dungeons, where our life is consumed aw T ay. 
The stifling heat, caused by the numbers crowded 
together, is intolerable. Eight days have passed 
since this letter was begun. During the first five days 
only bread and water were doled out to us. "J The 
Church did all in its power to soften such captivity. 
Its attempts were more successful than might have 
been supposed, owing to the venality of the gaolers, 
whose connivance was bought with bribes. It may 
also be supposed that the magistrates hoped the resis- 

* "Career habet tenebras, triste illic exspirat." (TertulUan, 
" Acta Martyrum," c. ii.) 

f " Habet vincula." (Ibid,) 

I " Cum jussi sumus secundum prseceptum Imperatoris fame et 
siti necari et reclusi sumus in duabus cellis, ita ut nos afficerent 
fame et siti ; sed et ignis ab opere pressurse nostra? tarn intolerabilis 
erat, quam nemo portare possit." (Cyprian, Epist. xxii. 2.) 



82 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tance of the prisoners might be overcome by the tender 
urgency of their acquaintance and friends, and thus 
winked at their admission. Immense sums were col- 
lected to procure help for the sufferers. ■" As to the 
succour given to those who, having nobly confessed the 
name of the Lord, are cast into prison," writes Cyprian, 
"I enjoin that nothing may be neglected; for the 
whole sum named has been distributed among the 
clergy for that purpose."* Occasionally the strange 
sight might be seen of a love-feast celebrated beneath 
the dark vaults of the prison ; every word of the 
martyrs was eagerly treasured up ; the Christians 
were never weary of gazing on them. So great was 
the desire to visit them, that the most simple pre- 
cautions were forgotten. Their friends besieged the 
door of the prison in crowds, instead of repairing 
to it secretly, and one by one, as prudence would have 
suggested. t 

Captivity, so far from crushing the courage of the 
Christians, had usually the effect of stimulating it. 
The honour of suffering for the noblest of causes, the 
lively realisation of that Divine support promised to 
all who are persecuted for the truth, the universal 
sympathy of the Church, the contrast between the 
horrors of the dungeon and the enthusiastic joy filling 
the heart of the captives, all contributed to raise the 
martyr Christians above themselves. They lived 
almost in a state of ecstasy. They had glorious visions, 
which made them forget their bonds and captivity; 
and, like the dying Stephen, they saw the dark clouds 
above their heads parting to reveal an open heaven, 
and palms and crowns of life waiting for the con- 

* Cyprian, Epist. v. 2. 

t " Caute et non glomeratim nee per multitudinum." (Ibid ) 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 83 

querors. The themes of their constant meditation 
became embodied, as it were, in dreams, which showed 
them all the promises of faith already realised in 
anticipation. Accounts of dreams and visions abound 
in the "Acts of the Martyrs;" they are indicative 
of the legitimate exaltation of soul produced among 
the Christians by a captivity, which was like the solemn 
watch of an army on the eve of the final conflict. The 
martyr had ever before his eyes the bloody battle which 
he was soon to fight, and all the perils and temptations 
which he would have to encounter. Perpetua sees 
rising before her a great ladder of gold, reaching from 
earth to heaven. On each side are instruments of 
torture, and a terrible dragon guards the first steps 
of the ascent. The young martyr crushes the dragon's 
head, and runs up all the rounds of the ladder, till she 
stands on the highest.* There the Good Shepherd 
awaits her. He is tall in stature, and full of tender- 
ness for His sheep. t He leads them into a wonderful 
garden, which is like a second Eden. In another dream, 
the young Christian confessor fancies herself already 
in the midst of the amphitheatre, combating with the 
devil, who has taken the form of an Egyptian, and at 
length receiving the palm of victory. Another martyr 
sees in his sleep a pagan coming to him, and declaring 
that if he does not deny the faith, he will inevitably 
perish. "We are ready to endure all things," replies 
the prisoner. "The greater the suffering the more 
glorious the victory."! On awaking, he feels his 
strength renewed by this confirmation of his earnest 
expectation and hope. Most frequently the prisoners 

* "Acta Martyrum," p. 82-85. f " Grandem, oves mulgentem." 
X " At ego confirmare votum meum volui. Vere inquarrij 
patiemur omnes." (" Acta Martyrum," p. 198.) 



84 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

are visited in their visions by their brethren who have 
already fought the good fight and received the crown. 
Perpetua sees the deacon Pomponius, but lately 
glorified, draw near to her prison-door to say to her : 
" Come, we are waiting for thee."* " He took me by 
the hand," she adds, " and we began to ascend together 
by steep and. tortuous paths.' 1 Saturus, in his dream, 
is carried by four angels, who put on him a white robe, 
and bring him into the midst of all the martyrs whom 
he knew when on earth. "We saw," he'says, "a great 
light, and heard a voice crying, Holy, Holy, Holy. 
Brought to the foot of the throne of the Lord Jesus, we 
were gathered to His embrace. "t We can well imagine 
how visions such as these would feed the courage of the 
Christians. The great pastors of the Church who, 
like Cyprian, had suffered martyrdom, often appear to 
the captives in their visions. J Thus the horrible pit 
is changed into the gate of heaven ; and, according to 
the poetical expression of the "Acts of the Martyrs," 
the joy of the Lord breaks forth in singing from the 
gloomy dungeon, and the crown blossoms on the 
thorns. § 

Tortures are more easy to be borne than the agonised 
entreaties of beloved voices; but this last ordeal was 
often a part of the captive Christian's lot. Origen de- 
clares that martyrdom has not reached its acme of 
anguish, except when the tender prayers of parents 
have been added to the violence of the gaolers, to shake 
the constancy of the prisoner. " If, throughout the 
whole time of trial, we will give no place in our hearts 

* " Perpetua, te espectamus, veni." (" Acta Martyrum," p. 84.) 
t "Vidimus lucem immensam et audivimus vocem : Agios, 

agios, osculati sumus." (Ibid.) | Ibid., p. 196-203. 

§ " Educitur de carcere lugubri gaudium cceli, de spinarum 

germine flos coronas." 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 85 

to the devil, who seeks to defile us by evil thoughts of 
hesitation or denial ; if we endure all the reproaches, 
all the outrages of our adversaries, and their mockery, 
and their slanders, and the contemptuous pity of our 
neighbours, who call us fools and madmen; and 
beyond all this, if the love of wife and of children, 
or attachment to that which has been our most 
cherished earthly treasure, fails to draw us back to life 
and its endearments ; if, still forsaking all earthly good, 
we give ourselves wholly to God and to the life which 
comes from Him .... then we have filled up the 
measure of martyrdom." * 

Family affections proved in more than one instance 
the most terrible of all temptations to the Christian 
captives. A frail woman like Perpetua had to resist at 
once the appeal of the tears and hoary hairs of her aged 
father, and the wailings of her new-born child. t 
Irenaeus, Bishop of Smyrna, at the moment of an 
agonising separation, had to turn away from the tears 
of those most dear to him. " His parents lamented over 
him with groans and bitter weeping; his servants 
and his neighbours were all filled with sorrow at his 
departure, and his friends implored him with many 
entreaties to have pity on his youth. "J The magistrates 
who deemed it an honour to bring about the apostasy 
of the Christians, favoured these sorrowful meetings. 
They would rend without pity the tenderest ties of 
kindred or friendship ; but when they judged that a 

* EJ fii) 7T6pie\KoifJie9a 7repi<7(ru»juevoi /cat virb rrjg 7Ti.pl ra Teicva 77 Kal 
tovtwv firjTspa (piXooropyiag, 0X01 yevo'i}itOa rov Qeov, tot civ elTroijiev otl 
£ir\r]p<bo~anEv to fxkpog rrjg 6/j.oXoyiag. (Origen, " Ad Martyr.,' 1 c. xi.) 
f " Miserere patris." (" Acta Martyrum," p. 82.) 
I " Parentum vero omnium luctus et fletus erat super eum, 
domesticorum genitus, vicinorum ululatus et lamentatio amicorum 
qui omnes clamantes ad eum dicebant : Tenerae adolescentise tuas 
miserere." (Ibid., p. 357.) 



86 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

renewal of affectionate intercourse might incline to 
recantation, they gave free access to the pagan father 
or husband, who came to plead with the captive the 
arguments of a blind affection. Perpetua was kept apart 
from her husband because he shared her faith ; but her 
father was permitted to renew, as often as he chose, 
his piteous entreaties with her to draw back. The 
Christians of those days were called to give an 
eloquent living commentary on the solemn words of 
the Master: "If any man come unto me, and hate 
not father and mother, wife and children, brethren 
and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot 
be my disciple." We can see from the greatness 
of their anguish that the hating, in the sense of this 
commandment, is compatible with a depth of love. 
This wa-s undoubtedly the most bitter drop in the cup 
of martyrdom. 

These rendings of the tenderest ties of nature, joined 
to the natural dread of torture, could scarcely fail to 
shake the resolution of unstable Christians. Weak- 
ness and indomitable strength were alike revealed when 
the trying day came to declare them. We must now 
follow the accused before the judgment-seat. The 
magistrates used every means in their power to find 
them guilty. They even subjected slaves to torture, to 
wring from them depositions against their Christian 
masters.* As soon as the prisoners entered the Forum, 
they were surrounded by a fanatic mob, ever ready to 
drown their voices in a clamour for their death. Often 
they could distinguish, in the midst of the excited crowd, 
the sorrowful group of their relations and friends. 
Here and there, their eyes met kind faces, which gave 

* Etc fiaoavovQ uXkvgclv oiKsrag twv i)fieripwv* (Justin, " Apol.," 
Vol. I. p. 50.) 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 8/ 

a glance of encouraging approval in the midst of the 
stormy reprobation of the rest.* The inquiry com- 
mences. It is conducted in violation of all good faith 
and fairness. While every ordinary prisoner has the 
right of self-defence, and may even engage an advocate 
to plead his cause, the Christian is neither allowed to 
present his own apology, nor to call in the aid of a more 
eloquent pleader than himself.t The one leading ques- 
tion is this : Art thou a Christian ? If the reply is in 
the affirmative, no further inquiry is needed ; the crime 
is proved ; condemnation will follow. That name 
alone carries within it the confession of gravest crimes, 
and is sufficient to bring down upon him who answers 
to it, odious suspicions of infamy, sacrilege, and re- 
bellion. The charge brought against the Christians is 
nowhere formally stated ; it is a floating suspicion, as 
it were, finding its most forcible expression in the ex- 
cited, fanatic crowd which throngs the Forum. It is an 
indictment brought forward anonymously, and its accu- 
sations are all the more terrible, because so indefinite 
that they cannot be refuted. " In the case of any 
other criminal," writes Tertullian, " it is not enough 
that he declare himself to be a homicide, sacrilegious, 
incestuous, an enemy of the state. Before you give 
sentence, O judges, you inquire rigorously into the 
circumstances, the quality of the deed, the place, time, 
manner of its commission, the witnesses and accom- 
plices. But in the trial of the Christians all this is 
dispensed with."! To own to the name of Christian, 
was for the accused by implication to confess himself 
guilty of every crime. No investigation was necessary. 

* "Acta Martyrum," p. 186. 

f " Christianis solis nihil permittitur loqui quod causam purget." 
(Tertullian, "Apol.," c. ii.) J Ibid. 



88 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

" Public hatred asks but one thing, and that, not in- 
vestigation into the crimes charged, but simply the 
confession of the Christian name."* The accused who 
will cleave to the faith, has only one reply to make, 
that which during three centuries never ceased to be 
heard in the forums of the empire, that which Cor- 
nelius put into the mouth of Polyeuctes, and which 
re-appears on every page of the " Acts of the Martyrs :" 
/ am a Christian ! (Christianus sum.) Noble reply, coming 
as it did from the lips of those who knew so well the 
popular outcry that would inevitably follow : Death to 
the Christian! Full of sublime calmness, with that 
heavenly brightness upon the brow which made the 
face of Stephen as the face of an angel, and which is 
ever the martyr's aureole, the accused has but this one 
reply to all his questioners : I am a Christian ! He 
has little to say about his worldly position, for earthly 
possessions are of small account in his eyes ; even to 
the inquiry whether he is a slave, or free, he scarcely 
cares to answer. " What is thy condition ? " said the 
judge to Saint Maximus. " I am a free man, but the 
slave of Christ. "t This scorn for all the lower dis- 
tinctions, so much accounted of by the world, is an 
unfailing characteristic of the Christians of that age, 
and we find the traces of it in the inscriptions on the 
catacombs, which, with very rare exceptions, pass 
over in complete silence the worldly condition of the 
departed.]: 

* "Sed illud solum expectatur quod odio publico necessarium 
est, confessio nominis, non examinatio criminis." (Tertullian, 
" Apol.," c. ii.) 

f " Cujus conditionis es?" " Ingenuus natus, servus vero 
Christi." (" Acta Martyrum," p. 133.) 

X See on this point' the very conclusive observation of M. E. 
Blanc, in his book, " Les inscriptions chretiennes de la Gaule." 
Vol. I. p. 85-118, 175. 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 89 

Having received the confession of the crime, the 
proconsul, without allowing the prisoner any oppor- 
tunity for fair defence, and refusing positively to hear 
any apology for the proscribed religion, nevertheless 
endeavours to shake the constancy of the accused. He 
himself becomes his advocate, or, to speak more truly, 
his tempter. He sets before the prisoner the peril to 
which he will be exposed, the certainty of a terrible 
death awaiting him if he perseveres. Often he artfully 
depicts the absurdity of the attitude of the accused in 
the eyes of his countrymen and contemporaries. The 
proconsul said to the martyr Epipodius : " We worship 
the immortal gods, who are adored by the whole world, 
and venerated by the most noble princes."* The wisdom 
of the. old world had long ago given expression to the 
same idea in a short saying of cowardly prudence : 
Vcz soli ! Woe to him who is alone, had been said 
before Christ came. His disciples were to teach the 
world that there is a glorious isolation in which truth 
may safely stand against all the- combined hosts of 
error ; and yet more, that he who has God for him is 
never alone. When this same proconsul added : " We 
worship the gods in gladness, with feasting and games, 
and you fall down before a Crucified One, who repels all 
gladness, "t he was endeavouring to strike a vibration 
from the least noble chords in man's nature; but it was 
enough for the Christian to know that he was bearing 
the cross of that Crucified One, and sharing His reproach, 
to thrill his soul with a joy so grand and godlike that 
all the delights possible to a pagan life fainted and 

* " Nos immortales deos colimus qtios universitas ftopulorum, 
quos sacratissimi principes venerantur." (" Acta Martyrum." p. 63.) 

\ " Nos deos colimeus laetitia, conviviis, ludis, vos yero hominem 
crucifixum qui laetitiam respuit." (Ibid.) 

1 



90 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

failed before it. When it was once ascertained that no 
suggestions such as these could shake the confessor's 
steadfastness, his condemnation was pronounced. About 
the middle of the third century capital punishment 
began to be deemed insufficient ; the Emperor gave 
orders that the magistrate should endeavour by torture 
to force a recantation. This horrible method had 
already been tried in the persecution at Lyons ; from 
this time it became a regular part of the procedure. 
All the refinements of cruelty were authorised by law ; 
and inexhaustible patience was thus pitted against 
remorseless barbarity. Condemnation was not, in all 
cases, followed by a violent death. The Christians 
were sometimes sent to the mines ; this was the hard 
labour of that age. They were thus exiled to some 
unhealthy island. But such lenient sentences were 
the exception ; generally, immediate death awaited the 
accused. The kind of death inflicted varied. Some, 
like St. Paul, were beheaded in prison ; some were 
thrown to wild beasts, like Ignatius; some were 
burned, liked Polycarp; some Christian virgins were even 
sentenced to infamy before being led to execution.* 
Among the proconsuls some were found favourable to 
the Christians, and willing to employ all means to 
save them. Such magistrates, however, were few; the 
judges were most frequently the pliant instruments of the 
policy of the emperor, or of the passions of the people. 

Large as was the number of faithful confessors, there 
were also some melancholy defections. Apostasy was 
the great trial and the great dread of the persecuted 
Church. Every one who had not a solid and personal 
faith, and had only joined the Church on some impulse 
of the mind or heart, without a thorough transformation 
* "Acta Martyrum," pp. 136, 403. 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 91 

of his moral nature, found himself unable to endure 
persecution. Many of these men, who were Christians 
only in name, never even crossed the threshold of the 
prison. They did not wait to be arrested and 
interrogated. " MaYiy of our number," says Cyprian, 
"vanquished before the fight, did not even make a show 
of sacrificing under compulsion. They ran of their own 
accord to the Forum, as if they were indulging a long- 
cherished desire. They were to be seen entreating the 
magistrates to receive their recantation, though it was 
already almost night."* Others could endure some days 
of imprisonment. Some held out until the time of their 
trial came ; but the horrible prospect of torture com- 
pleted their defeat. They consented to sacrifice to the 
gods, or to swear by the fortune of the Emperor, — a 
formula of apostasy often used, because it was less 
open.t It was observed that those who had been 
brought up in dignity and wealth, and men in office, 
formed the majority of the apostates, % thus showing, as 
Cyprian eloquently remarks, that " they were rather 
possessed by their goods than possessed them." § These 
were not all hypocrites. True faith has its hour of 
weakness, and more than one sincere believer wept 
repentant tears, bitter as Peter's, for the denial of which 
he had been guilty. 'Sometimes, too, the apostasy was 
only apparent. A wife would be dragged to the altar 
of the false gods by her husband, and he did the 
idolatrous act while he held her hands forcibly pressed 
within his own. The victim of such a terrible com- 
pulsion might truly say, after the unwilling sacrifice 

* " Ante aciem multi victi, ultro ad forum currere, quasi hoc 

olim cuperent." (Cyprian, " De lapsis," VIII.) 

t Origen, "Ad Martyr.," I.278. I Eusebius,"H.E.,"Bk.VI.c.4i.) 
§ " Possidere se credunt, qui potius possidentis." (Cyprian, 

"De lapsis," VIII.) 



92 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

was accomplished, "It was you who did it ; not I."* 
Unhappily, too, many of the persecuted took the in- 
itiative in defection, and did not wait for any violent 
constraint to deny their faith. It was not, however, 
without deep distress of heart that they apostatised. 
The very crowd, which by their violence had wrung 
from these terrified spirits the disavowal of their faith, 
jested at their cowardice; and the denial often failed to 
fulfil its purpose, for the apostates were still objects 
of distrust and suspicion, and at any caprice of the 
fickle multitude their lives were sacrificed. t Many 
thus suffered the martyr's death, who had renounced 
the martyr's crown. Dionysius of Alexandria tells us 
how the apostates stood trembling during the sacrifice, 
as if they were themselves the victims rather than the 
offerers.^ Cyprian has eloquently expressed the in- 
ward agony which they experienced in that accursed 
hour. He says : " When the apostate comes to the 
Capitol of his own accord, just as he is about to 
perform voluntarily the abominable act, does he not 
tremble and turn pale ? Is he not shaken to the very 
depths of his being, while his arm falls powerless by 
his side ? Does he not seem to have lost both speech 
and reason ? He had renounced the devil and the 
world, and how can he, the servant of God, stand erect 
and open his mouth to deny the Lord Jesus Christ ? 
Is not that altar, on which he is making his Lord a 
sacrifice, the veriest place of torture to him ? Unhappy 
man ! what need hast thou to bring a victim for sacri- 
fice ? Thou art thyself the victim before the altar, 

* " Non feci ; nos fecistis." (Cyprian, Epist. xxiv.) 
f This occurred at Lyons. (Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. V. c. I.) 
I Qvirsp ov Ovaovng, a\\a avroi Qvjxara. (Eusebius, " H. E.," 
Bk. VI. c. 4.) 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 93 

for thou hast made an offering of thy salvation, of thy 
hope, and it is thy faith which is consumed in those 
accursed flames."* 

The dark despair of these apostates was terrible to 
witness. Some committed suicide, like Judas. Cyprian 
speaks of a woman, who, at the point of death, tore 
with her teeth the tongue which had denied the 
Lord Jesus. t There were various forms of apostasy. 
Many Christians, to save themselves from the last ex- 
tremities, whether of suffering or of shame, bought for 
money the tolerance of the magistrates, or managed to 
get possession of a certificate, attesting that they had 
sacrificed to the gods, when they had not done so. 
But it was a vain subterfuge, and only added sin to 
sin. The libellatici, as those persons were called who 
had obtained this false certificate, were none the less 
numbered among the apostates.^ The case was the 
same with those who had received such certificates 
second-hand, without having themselves appealed to 
the magistrates. After each persecution, the Church 
had a sorrowful reckoning of the dead who had fallen 
on the field of battle; and the lost, over whom the 
bitterest tears were wept, were not the martyrs, but 
those who in the day of peril had denied their Lord. 
" No words, only tears," said Cyprian, " can express 
the grief we feel over the wound made in the body of 
Christ, which is the Church, by the fatal falling away 

* " Quid hostiam tecum, miser, quid victimam immolaturus 
imponis. Ipse ad aram hostia, immolasti illic salutem tuam, spem 
tuam, fidem tuam funestis illis ignibus concremasti." (Cyprian, 
" De lapsis," III.) f Ibid., XXIV. 

X " Sententiam nostram protulimus adversus cos, qui se ipsos 
infideles illicita nefarariorum libellorum professione prodiderant, 
quasi evasuri irretientes illos diaboli laqueos viderentur, qui non 
minus, quam si ad nefarias aras accessissent, hoc ipso, quod ipsum 
contestati fuissent, tenerentur." (Cyprian, Epist. xxx. 3.) 



94 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of some. Who could be so insensible, so hard-hearted, 
so forgetful of the love of the brethren, as to look with 
a dry eye on these terrible, these ruinous desolations ?"* 
The Christians found ' faithless in the hour of trial, 
used afterwards to come back in crowds, and stand 
knocking at the door of the Church ; and the mode 
of their re-admission gave rise to one of the most 
delicate questions of ecclesiastical discipline. 

The noble courage of the true confessors of the 
faith stands forth in all its grandeur against the dark 
background of pagan cruelty and cowardly apostasy. 
They were heroic alike in word and deed. The 
mighty voice of the Holy Spirit sounded through the 
.lips of the martyrs. t The sublime had ceased to be 
extraordinary in the Church. We feel, as we read 
the replies of the humblest Christians, so grand in 
their very simplicity, that human nature is raised 
above itself; that it is divinely exalted by the power 
of faith in the presence of instant peril. Especially 
in the first persecutions is this simple grandeur a 
pre-eminent characteristic. In process of time there 
came to be a scarcely definable theatrical element 
in martyrdom, and a certain admixture of human 
passion. Towards the commencement of the fourth 
century, the Christians began to feel that the triumph 
of their cause was secure. Their language sometimes 
breathes defiance; some fling the reproach of tyranny 
in the face of their judges. J The golden age of mar- 

* " Lacrymis magis quam verbis opus est ad exprimandum 
dolorem, quo corporis nostri plaga deflenda est." (Cyprian, " De 
lapsis." IV.) 

f '' Vox plena Spiritus Sancti de martyris ore prorupit." 
(Cyprian, Epist. x 4.) 

I Martyrdom of Saint Romanus: " Cur jam ty ramie non cesses." 
("Acta Martyrum," pp. 214, 315.) 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 95 

tyrdom is in the second and third centuries. The 
impression produced by it upon the world and on the 
Church itself passes all conception. " It is certain," 
said Justin Martyr, "that nothing can make us deny 
our faith, neither the sword of the slayer, nor the 
cross of agony, nor the teeth of fierce beasts, nor 
bonds, nor fire, nor tortures of any kind. The more 
men multiply our sufferings, the more does the 
number of the faithful grow, the more are the 
disciples found on the side of Christ."* Instan- 
taneous conversions took place in the very pretorium 
where the Christians were on their trial. When 
Marcellinus was condemned, the clerk of the court 
openly expressed his indignation, and threw down 
the insignia of his office. t Thus was daily verified 
the beautiful saying of Tertullian : "The blood of 
the martyrs is the seed of the Church." . The 
Christians who survived the confessors cherished an 
ardent attachment to their memory. They gathered 
up their ashes ; they recorded their words and acts.;}; 
This natural enthusiasm, carried to excess, became 
the parent of more than one dangerous error, and 
led,, in the end, to sinful idolatry. But so long as it 
was contained within due bounds, it stimulated faith, 
and sustained the spirit of heroism. We find constant 
traces of such an influence in the writings of the 
Fathers. In the "Acts of the Martyrs" it finds 
expression in the following passage, which is full of 
touching simplicity and true eloquence: " O blessed 
martyrs, ye who have been tried by fire, like fine 
gold, you are crowned with the diadem and the 

* "QcTTSp av toiqvtu rivet yivr\-ai, Torrovriij paWov dWoi 7rXei6veg iriaroi. 
(Justin, " Dial, cum Tryph ," p. 337.) 

f " Acta Martyrum," r P- 267. J Ibid., p. 179. 



96 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

crown which cannot fade away, because you have 
bruised under your feet the serpent's head."* Origen 
gives us the most glorious conception of these suffer- 
ings of the confessors, when he speaks of them like 
St. Paul, as the fulfilling of the sufferings of the 
Saviour, as the being crucified with Him. He says: 
"As we behold the martyrs everywhere under con- 
demnation, coming forth from every Church to be 
brought before the tribunal, we see in each of them 
the Lord Himself condemned. How can we doubt 
it, when we know from His own words, that it 
is not a mere man like one of us ; who is cast 
into prison to endure cold and hunger and thirst, but 
that it is He Himself who thus suffers in the sufferer. 
Hence, when any Christian is condemned simply as 
a Christian, and for no other reason, for no other 
crime, it is Jesus Christ who is condemned in his 
person. It follows that He is condemned everywhere 
throughout the earth where men suffer in His 
name."t Martyrdom, thus regarded, presents a spec- 
tacle equally sublime and pathetic. " A great as- 
sembly," says Origen, " is called to witness your 
combat, like the thousands who gather to watch 
famous athletes. You can say with Paul, ' We are a 
spectacle unto angels and to men.' Thus the whole 
world and all angels, those on the right hand and those 
on the left ; all men, those on the Lord's side and those 
who are with His adversaries, are present at your 
conflict for the faith of Christ ; and, according to its 
issue, either the angels in heaven will rejoice over 
you, or — God forbid — there shall be joy over you in 

* "Acta Martyrum," p. 194. 

j- 'OaaKig ovv xpicFTiavbg citcaZerai, Xptarvg taru) 6 SiKaZc/isvog, 
(Origen, " In Jeremiam homelia," XIV. 8 ; Vol. III. pp. 212, 213.) 



BOOK I. — PAGAN PERSECUTIONS. 97 

hell."* In other words, the arena of the Church is the 
world, the witnesses are heaven and earth, and the 
strength of the Church is Jesus Christ, who is shame- 
fully entreated in every one of His tortured followers. 
A cause so noble, naturally produces noble champions. 
The pagan world, with its glory and power, is not strong 
enough to fight with them and overcome them. Thus 
we see the Church stepping with calmness and com- 
posure into the Roman circus ; for high above emperor, 
and generals, and senators, she sees God the Judge, 
and the crown of life held forth to those who are 
faithful unto death. 

f Msya Q'tarpov avyKpoTeirai , e<p' i)\uv ayoivi^Ofievoig, (Ori°*en, "Ad 
Martyr.," XVIII. Vol. I. p." 285.) 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE, FROM A.D. 98 
TO A.D. I90. 

§ I. The Persecution wider Trajan and Adrian. The 
Revolt of Barcochebas. 

After a transient peace enjoyed under Nerva, the 
Church entered upon a new period of persecution under 
Trajan. As in preceding reigns, the persecution was 
excited by popular tumults. In several cities, the 
people rose against the Christians, and clamoured for 
their death. Christianity had made notable progress 
in the years preceding, especially in the provinces of 
Asia Minor, where, amid the universal decadence of the 
old religions, and the eager restlessness of men's minds, 
a few favouring circumstances sufficed to draw great 
numbers into the Church. According to the testimony 
of Pliny, every age and condition of life furnished its 
contingent to the new converts. The Roman pro- 
consul wrote in alarm: "The superstition has spread 
from the cities into the country like an infection carried 
by the wind. The temples are forsaken, and in many 
places the sacred ceremonies have been interrupted. 
Victims are no longer brought to be sacrificed to the 
gods."* This last charge, connected with what oc- 
curred at Ephesus in the time of St. Paul, explains the 

* " Multi omnis aetatis, omnis ordinis. Neque enim civitates 
tantum sed vicos etiam superstitionis istius contagio pervagata est. 
Prope jam desolata templa " (Pliny, Bk. X. Epist. xcvi.) 



BOOK I. — PERSECUTION UNDER TRAJAN. 99 

hostility of one large section of the population against 
the Christians. All those who lived by the altar were 
sure to malign those who so gravely compromised 
their interests. To such motives may be in great part 
ascribed the popular tumults raised against the Church, 
which Eusebius mentions.* 

The prince who at this time governed the empire, was 
not one of those weak and passionate tyrants, who are 
ever ready to flatter the passions of the multitude, and 
are the terrible instruments of its fury or caprice. He 
was neither a Nero nor a Domitian. Trajan was a man 
of elevated mind, an adept in the philanthropic philosophy 
of his time, the friend of Tacitus and Pliny. He was 
also an illustrious general and a consummate politician. 
He allowed himself to be guided by reasons of State ; 
but these, as we have seen, tended to incline him to 
persecution. He had set himself the task of regene- 
rating Roman society ; he was the great protector of 
paganism ; and Pliny, in his Panegyric, praises him for 
his piety. Better than any other, the philosophic pro- 
consul could estimate the true value of this official 
piety. The confidant of his master, he knew the scorn- 
ful scepticism which lurked beneath this seeming 
devotion ; but it was all the more needful, from a 
political point of view, to encourage the revival of the 
ancient faiths among the people. Trajan had also 
another motive for being highly averse to Christianity. 
He had issued very severe decrees against every species 
of secret association, commanding his proconsuls to 
prohibit and punish them.t The assemblies of the 

* MepiKMQ teal Kara TroXeig t% iiravaGTaae.wQ dij/juov rbv ko.6' ri/aajv icare- 
X^i \6yoQ hmKivifOrjvai Siojy/xop. (Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. III. c. 32.) 

f '' Quod ipsum facere desisse post edictum meum quo secundum 
mandata tua hetserias esse vetueram." (Pliny, Bk. X. Epist. xcvi.) 



100 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Christians might well pass for such associations, and 
thus fall under the ban of the emperor. 

Pliny, immediately on his arrival in Bithynia, found 
himself brought into contact with the Christians. 
They were speedily denounced to him by eager in- 
formers. He was greatly surprised at the number and 
character of the accused, and asked directions from his 
master. The letters exchanged on this subject between 
him and Trajan are of great importance, since they 
contain the first imperial rescript against Christianity. 
However moderate in form, this marks a momentous 
era. Up to this time, the pretext for the persecution 
of the new religion had been rather the crimes of the 
Christians than the doctrine itself. After Trajan's 
reply to Pliny, this ceases to be the case. The accu- 
sation no longer rests upon heavy crimes laid to the. 
charge of Christianity. It is well understood between 
Trajan and Pliny that no such charge can be sustained. 
The proconsul has used all his skill in examining the 
accused ; he has done more ; according to Roman 
custom, he has put two slaves to the torture.* But he 
has been unable to find anything to lay to the charge 
of the new religionists, except the practice of their own 
worship. The sole crime of the Christians is having 
renounced the religion of their fathers. t If then they 
are still to be punished and proscribed, the punishment 
and proscription are aimed at Christianity itself. 
Pliny asks the emperor what course he is under such 
circumstances to pursue. Must he punish equally all 
who are implicated in this superstition without respect 

* " Interrogavi ipsos an essent Christiani ; magis necessarium 
credidi ex duabus ancillis, quae ministras dicebantur, quid esset veri, 
et per tormenta quaerere." (Pliny, Bk. X. Epist. xcvi.) 

■f " Nihil aliud inveni quam superstitionem pravam et immodi- 
cam." (Ibid.) 



BOOK I. — PERSECUTION UNDER TRAJAN. IOI 

of age or sex ? Must he seek to bring them to repent- 
ance, constrain them to apostatise (as already with 
notable success he had done), or must adherence to the 
.new religion be treated as an inexpiable crime ? Does 
the very name of Christian constitute a man a criminal, 
when on all other points his innocence is proved un- 
blemished ? * 

Trajan's reply is very clear. He does not desire 
persecution for persecution's sake, for he is not cruel. 
He desires, then, that it be avoided as far as possible. 
Without laying down fixed and positive rules, the 
emperor wills that information against the Christians 
should not be encouraged, especially anonymous in- 
formation; this would be a retrogression to the practices 
of other times. t The Christians are not to be sought 
out, and the greatest indulgence is to be shown to those 
who will recant. But to the question, whether Chris- 
tianity is in itself a crime, Trajan replies without the 
least ambiguity. Whosoever is convicted of it, and 
refuses to sacrifice to the gods, is to be put to death. J 
The condemnation of the new religion is thus absolute 
and positive. The more the emperor is disposed to 
show leniency to individuals, the more evident is it 
that Christianity itself is laid under the imperial ban. 
The Christians were the first to be misled by the mild- 
ness of the emperor's words. Comparing the modera- 
tion of Trajan with the cruelty of his predecessors, and 
of some of his successors, the early Church refused to 
allow him to be called a persecutor. Neither Tertullian 
nor Melito place him among the enemies of the Church. 

* " Nomen ipsum, si flagitiis careat." 

+ " Nam et pessimi exempli et non nostri seculi." (Pliny, Bk. 
X. Epist. lxxvii.) 

X " Si deferantur et arguantur, puniendi sunt." (Ibid.) 



102 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The illusion was a strange one ; the letter of Trajan, 
by regulating and legalising persecution, made it a 
permanent institution. The moderation of the emperor 
would die with him, while his decree was a terrible 
weapon of offence perpetually directed against the 
Church, and which would soon escape the grasp of a 
Trajan and a Pliny. 

The letter of Pliny informs us how these first persecu- 
tions were conducted. The Christians brought before the 
tribunal of the proconsul, whether under denunciation 
as Christians or for any other cause, were interrogated, 
and on being convicted of belonging to the sect, were at 
once condemned to death. * They were taken before 
the statues of the gods ; the image of the emperor was 
brought. They were urged to pay homage to the gods, 
to burn incense in their honour, and to pour out the 
sacred libations while pronouncing maledictions on the 
name of Christ, t The inroads made by merely out- 
ward and nominal Christianity, as early as the days of 
St. John, explain how it was that a considerable 
number of those thus accused fell into apostasy. They 
did not, however, calumniate the religion they aban- 
doned ; on the contrary, constrained by the power of 
the truth, they bore the highest testimony to its worth. 
Others remained immoveable, and sealed their fidelity 
with their blood. X 

The policy of Trajan towards the Christians was 
adopted by his successor Adrian. There might have 
seemed reason to fear that the passionate attachment 
of this emperor to ancient customs would have led to a 

* " Confitentes iterum ac tertio interrogavi supplicium minatus." 
(Epist. Bk. X. c. 96.) 

\ " Cum, praeunte me, deos appellarent et imagini tuas thure ac 
,r ino supplicarunt, praeterea maledicerent Christo." (Ibid.) 

I " Perseverantes duci justi." (Ibid.) 



BOOK I. — PERSECUTION UNDER ADRIAN. IO3 

general persecution of the Church. There was all the 
more ground for such an apprehension, because in the 
countries where Christianity had long taken root, as in 
Asia Minor, the enemies of the Christians were many 
and bitter, and spared neither violence nor perfidy in 
their attacks upon them, sometimes laying anonymous 
charges against them, sometimes stirring up tumults, 
so as to force the magistrates to interfere.* The 
emperor in one of his journeys into Greece, sought 
initiation into the mysteries of Eleusis, and the 
Christians saw in this new sanction given to pagan 
superstitions new peril for themselves. t 

It was on this occasion that the first apologies of 
Christianity were written. Quadratus, an elder or 
bishop in the city of Athens, and Aristides, both 
sent to Adrian an argumentative defence of their 
faith. The result of this intervention was very 
happy for the Church. According to Melito of Sardis 
— who was almost a contemporary of Quadratus and 
Aristides, since he lived under Marcus Aurelius — a 
benignant letter was written by Adrian to Fondanus, 
the proconsul of Asia Minor. This letter has been 
preserved ; X and an attempt has been made to repre- 
sent it as a sort of revocation of Trajan's rescript, and 
an implicit authorisation of Christianity, allowing it to 
take its place among the recognised religions of the 
empire. An act of such capital importance would, 
beyond question, have been expressly notified. Adrian 

* See Adrian's letter to Minutius Fondanus, Proconsul of 
Asia Minor: "Precibus et acclamationibus uti non permitto.'" 7 
( « Gieseler," I. 172 Eusebius, "H. E.,' J Bk. IV. c. 8.) 

f St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustribus," c. xix. 

I This letter was translated into Greek by Eusebius (" H. E." 
Bk. IV. c. 9). Rufinus has probably given the original in his trans- 
lation of Eusebius. 



104 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

simply confirmed the decree of his predecessor. If he 
prohibits calumny and summary conviction, he never- 
theless declares that all that is contrary to law is to be 
punished. * Now, the profession of an unauthorised 
religion was unlawful in the highest degree ; and it 
would need an unequivocal declaration to raise the new 
faith — the object of such violent animosities — above the 
interdict which for so many years had rested upon it. 

While Asia Minor was the focus of persecution, 
the other provinces in which Christianity flourished 
were not exempt. Simon, the son of Cleophas, who 
succeeded James in the government of the Church 
of Jerusalem, suffered martyrdom in Palestine under 
Trajan. The authors of his death were some fanatical 
Judaeo-Christians attached to the synagogue. They 
accused him of seditious proceedings, on the ground 
that he was descended from the royal race of his 
people, t He was crucified. 

The time came when the Jews were no longer 
obliged to use the hand of their adversaries in order to 
persecute the Christians. Since the year 115, they had 
never ceased to stir up rebellion in Greece, in Egypt, 
in Cyprus, and in Mesopotamia. Adrian, in his 
irritation, desired to annihilate the last remnants of 
Judaism. He forbade the Jews to practise circum- 
cision, and commanded that an entirely new town 
should be built upon the ruins of Jerusalem. The 
emperor encountered an obstinate resistance. The 

* " Si quis igitur accusat et probat adversum leges quidquam agere 
memoratos homines pro merito peccatorum etiam supplicia 
statues." (Routh, " Reliq. Sacrse," I. 73.) " If anyone gives evi- 
dence that the persons named have done anything against the laws, 
they are to be condemned to suffer in proportion to the gravity of 
their crimes." 

f EvKoQavTTiOels vwb rwv aipkceuv. (Hegesippus. See Routh, " Reliq. 
Sacras," II. 14.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 105 

Jews, under the leadership of a false Messiah named 
Barcochebas, struggled long, and not without success, 
against the Roman eagles. 

The false Messiah would naturally persecute the 
disciples of the true. Thus the blood of the Chris- 
tians flowed in torrents. When the insurrection 
had been subdued, the town of JElis. Capitolina, thus 
named in honour of the emperor, rose in the place of the 
Holy City. 

Admission to it was prohibited to the Jews.* They 
were even forbidden to look from afar oif at the place 
where once had been Jerusalem. " Adrian," says an 
ancient historian of the Church, " was resolved to root 
out this rebel race, and not leave it even a pretext for 
rebellion, not suffering it to hear the name of the father- 
land, so fearful was he that, in its zeal and audacity, 
it would steal secretly within the walls of the city, there 
to fight with the Romans." t These decretals brought 
down the heaviest blow, not only on Judaism but 
on Judaeo-Christianity, which had henceforward no 
alternative but to unite with the Church, or to 
perpetuate itself in the form of an heretical sect. 

§ II. The Church and the Empire under the reign of 
Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus. (a.d. 
138-191.) 

Between the tyranny of the first Caesars and the 
sanguinary and shameless folly of Commodus and 
Heliogabaius, a time of respite was given to the world, 
under the reign of the four philosophical emperors. Under 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. IV. c. 6. 

■j- To ttcLv IOvoq IS, ifceivov icai rfjg Trepi ra 'lepocroXvfia yqg 7ra[X7rav 
l7n€aiv€iv tipyerai. (Aristo Pelkeus, in Eusebius, ft H. E./' Bk. 
IV. c. 6. Routh, " Reliq. Sacras," I. 96.) 



106 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

two of these emperors the Church also enjoyed larger 
immunity from suffering, but it never passed a single day 
in complete security. We have seen how persecution, 
formally authorised by the decree of Trajan, slumbered 
again under Adrian, but it was a slumber lightly 
broken, and at any moment legal proceedings might be 
comm-enced against a proscribed religion. Antoninus 
Pius (136-161) — the best, perhaps, of all the Roman 
Emperors, the most simply virtuous, the most careful 
of human life — maintained the same character in his 
conduct towards the Church. Marcus Aurelius has 
given us in his " Meditations " a very beautiful por- 
traiture of his predecessor. He says : " Gentleness was 
united in him with stern inflexibility of judgment. He 
scorned the vain glory which confers false honours. 
Zeal for the public good ever animated him. So long 
as he reigned, flattery was compelled to hide its head. 
He had no superstitious fear of the gods. While 
always conforming his conduct to the example of our 
fathers, he did not affect any display of fidelity to the 
ancient traditions." * Capitolinus, his historian, speaks 
of him thus: " Full of clemency, of a placid tempera- 
ment, sober, gentle, he did all things with moderation, 
without boasting. Like Titus, he esteemed it better to 
spare the life of one man than to kill a thousand 
enemies." t Antoninus took no direct part in the per- 
secutions. If he could not prevent their recurrence in 
some parts of his empire, it was because, in order 
entirely to put a stop to them, he must have revoked 
Trajan's decree, and thus effected a radical revolution 
in the whole constitution of the State, and he was not 

* " Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," I. 6. 

•f- " Moribus clemens, placidus ingenio, prascipue sobrius * 
(" Hist. August. Anton. Pius/' Jul. Capitolinus ) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 107 

the man thus to move in advance of his age. When 
he was informed that in Greece the people, irritated by 
some public calamity, were rising and preparing to 
massacre the Christians, he wrote to the magistrates of 
the towns where these tumults had broken out, direct- 
ing them to take no new measures against the Church.* 
It is possible that these favourable letters may have 
been the result of the first " Apology of Justin Martyr," 
which was about this time presented to the emperor. 
That " Apology," the consideration of which in all its 
relations to doctrinal discussion is beyond our present 
purpose, t is full of a manly courage and simple dignity, 
which must have appeared very remarkable in an age 
when respect and servility, firmness and rebellion, were 
so commonly confounded. Justin's attitude was as far 
as possible from that of a suppliant, tremblingly craving 
the favour of an arbitrary power. Deeply convinced of 
the goodness of his cause, he pleads it with authority, 
in the name of the eternal law of justice, to which 
violence w*as done in the person of the Christians, 
and he makes it very clear that he believes he is 
doing a service to his country, in thus denouncing its 
flagrant iniquities. This will be self-evident from the 
introduction to the " Apology," which is as follows : 

" To the Emperor Titus-iEiius-Adrian-Antoninus- 
Pius, Caesar Augustus, and to his son the eminent 
philosopher, and to Lucius, philosopher and friend of 
science, son of Lucius Caesar by nature, and son of the 
emperor by adoption, to the reverend Senate, and to the 
whole Roman people. In the name of these unjustly 

* 'O da 7ra-r)p aov rah 7r6\e(Ti irepl rov /irjcev veojrepl^fiv Trspl r\\x.Sjv 
tyoa^iv. (Melito, in " Apol. ad Marc. Aurel." Eusebius, 4i H. E ," 
Bk. IV. c. 26.) 

f We shall devote a special chapter to the apology of Chris- 
tianity doctrinally considered. 



108 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

hated and much-abused men, I, Justin, one of them- 
selves, present to you this discourse and petition.* 
You, who are everywhere proclaimed the Pious, the 
guardian of justice, the friend of truth, your acts shall 
show whether you merit these titles, t My design is 
neither to flatter you by this letter nor to obtain any 
favour. X I simply ask you to judge us by the rules 
of a scrupulous and enlightened equity, and not by a 
mere presumption, nor in the name of a superstition 
sanctioned by you in order to please men, nor by an un- 
reflecting impulse, nor at the persuasion of calumny. 
This would* be to give judgment against yourself, for we 
fear no harm that can be done to us by anyone, if we 
are not found guilty of any crime. You can kill, you 
cannot injure us. § Our request is neither unreasonable 
nor audacious. What we ask is simply that a close 
investigation may be made into the charges brought 
against us, and that if they be well founded we be 
severely punished, as is our due. But if they are 
without proof, does not reason forbid you to do wrong 
to these calumniated men, or rather to yourselves, who 
would in such a case be acting not in equity but in 
passion ? For the wise man there is but one sure way 
of judging, that is, to allow the accused every oppor- 
tunity to prove their innocence, and not to listen on the 
throne to the counsels of violence or tyranny, but to 
those of piety and philosophy. || On these terms alone 
can princes and subjects know true happiness. One of 
old has said that if governors and governed do not 

* 1ov(tt~ivos eh avraiv. (" Apol.," I. Opera, p. 53.) % 
t El 8e Kai virapx^re SeixOrjatrai. (Ibid.) 

X Ou yap KoXaicivaovreQ ov8e 7rpbg X"P IV ofiikrjcrovreg. (Ibid.) 
§ 'Yutig <T cnroKTUvai 8vvao9i, j3\a\pai 8' ov. (Ibid., p. 54.) 
|| 'Oftoibjg 8' av Kai rovg ap\ovrag \ii] ftiq., fiect rvpavviSi, dXX' tv<Ji£da 
Kai <pi\ocjo<pia, aKoXovOovvrag, ri)v iprjcpov TiOtaQai. (Ibid.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 109 

allow themselves to be guided by philosophy, there is 
no happiness for the State. Our duty, then, is to make 
our deeds and our doctrines fully known, lest we should 
be held responsible for crimes committed against us 
through blindness and ignorance. Your duty to your- 
selves, as dictated by reason, is to investigate our cause, 
and to act as good judges. * You will then be 
inexcusable before God if you act not justly when you 
have once known the truth." 

Such words might well surprise the rulers of the 
world; it was the first time they had heard the firm 
bold utterance of the right, and the just demand of the 
Christian conscience. 

Justin Martyr goes on to set forth with much power 
the iniquitousness of the summary modes of trial used 
in the case of the disciples of the new religion, who 
were condemned upon the simple declaration that they 
were Christians. He says : " Men deserve neither 
praise nor punishment for the name they bear, but for 
the kind of life they lead." He then deals, with re- 
markable force, with the accusations brought against 
the Christians ; he repudiates them one by one, and 
according to the practice of ancient apologists, attacks 
his adversaries while he defends himself, and turns 
against them the sword he has snatched from their 
hands. The leading charges against the Christians are 
three. They are denounced to the emperor as atheists, 
rebels, and evil-doers. "True," replies Justin, "we 
are atheists, if to be otherwise we must needs acknow- 
ledge your gods, t which are but devils ; and this 
glorious atheism we hold in common with Socrates, 

* 'Yfitrtpov ok, wg cupel \6yog, ciKOvovrag ctyaOovg evpiaKeaOai /cptras. 
(" Apol.," I. Opera, p. 54.) 

f 'OfioXoyoii/jLev rwv toLovtojv 9eu>v &9toi tlvai. (Ibid., p. 56.) 



110 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

who was sacrificed, as we are, for the cause of that great 
truth derived from the word which he published in 
Greece. As for us, we have received it from the Word 
Himself, clothed in a visible form. Therefore are we 
called atheists. We are such, in reference to your gods; 
we are no atheists as touching the God of truth, the 
Father of righteousness, of wisdom, and of all virtue, 
the most Holy. Him we worship. We honour Him 
in word and in deed, and we desire freely to impart to 
all the truth which we have received. We do not place 
wreaths of flowers on our altars, nor gather round them 
a crowd of victims ; we do not worship the works of 
men's hands, placed in the temples under the names of 
some divinity. How can we believe that God would 
-offer Himself in such a manner for our adoration ? It 
is not only an absurd belief, it is an outrage upon God.* 
W^hat ! you give to that which perishes and cannot 
sustain itself, the name of Him whose glory and beauty 
are from everlasting to everlasting ! " 

With regard to the second charge, that of .rebellion, 
Justin is not less vigorous in his defence. Not content 
with establishing that the kingdom founded by Jesus 
Christ is a purely spiritual kingdom, the progress of 
which need give no apprehension to the princes of this 
world, he clearly enunciates the wise principles of the 
primitive Church as to its relation to constituted autho- 
rities. After adducing the words of Christ, spoken on 
the payment of tribute to Caesar, Justin adds : " We 
worship God alone, but with this exception, we joyfully 
obey you ; we acknowledge you as our princes and 
governors, and we ask for you that to the sovereign 

* 'A\\d teal e<p v(3pei rov 8eov yivexrOai og apprjrov S6%av icai fiop<pt)v 
kx<*>v. (•' Apol.," I. Opera, p 57.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. Ill 

power with which you are invested, may be added the 
wisdom to make a right use of it." * Justin Martyr 
carries his argument yet further, and shows that no 
doctrine is better adapted than the Christian doctrine 
to maintain order and tranquillity in the state. Human 
laws are powerless as a restraint, because men always 
hope to elude them. But how can they escape from 
the God who sees all things, and knows not only what 
we do but even what we think ? As to the crimes laid 
to the charge of the Christians, Justin contents himself 
with drawing an admirable picture of their life and 
worship, the pure colours of which we shall often have 
to borrow to assist our representation of the Christian 
life and practices of the ancient Church. It aims 
to show that this Crucified One, whom the Christians 
are reproached with worshipping, is the Divine Word — 
incarnate, sovereign wisdom, and living truth. He 
quotes some of His most beautiful utterances, and asks 
that they be tried, not by mere vulgar prejudice, but at 
the bar of the human conscience. Unhappily for his 
design, Justin in his treatise confounds philosophical 
discussion, with the simple apology required for pre- 
sentation to the emperor. He enters too minutely into 
details of doctrine, and into the analogy between the re- 
ligion of the Incarnate Word, and the ancient religions 
and philosophies which contained scattered fragments 
of the same truth. Such dogmatic disquisitions were 
incongruous with a petition to Antoninus and Marcus 
Aurelius. The distinction established in his " Apology " 
between Christianity and heresy of various kinds, which 
he represents as a counterfeit of the Gospel wrought by 

* '09cv 9eov fiev fiovov 7rpoc>Kvvov[j.ev ifilv fit Trpbg rd aWa xaipovrtQ, 
(" ApoL," I. Opera, p. 64.) 



112 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Satan, is more to the point ; * but here also he enters 
into too great detail. In spite of its defects, his "Apology" 
could not but produce a strong impression by its noble 
frankness as well as by that boldness of speech which 
we have already remarked, and which never falters. 
Profoundly convinced that the struggle between the 
Church and the Empire is pre-eminently a struggle 
between the powers of heaven and hell, Justin does 
not hesitate to tell the emperors that they are unwit- 
tingly under the influence of evil spirits. " We are 
persuaded," he says, "that your conduct towards us is 
inspired by the impure demons who seek sacrifice and 
homage from those who have abjured the light of 
reason. t Virtuous and wise princes, such as you, would 
not of themselves act contrary to reason. Take heed 
that the demons vanquished by us do not lead you 
away captive. They seek to have you for their slaves 
and ministers." J Elsewhere Justin has the boldness 
to say to the supreme authority, which for so many 
years had decreed all the persecutions, " After all, 
princes who prefer an idle opinion to the truth, use 
a power only like that of robbers in lonely places." § 
In other words, persecution is cowardly murder. 

The close of the "Apology" is as powerful as its exor- 
dium. " If this doctrine," says Justin, in conclusion, 
" appears to you true and founded on reason, pay heed 
to it. If contrariwise, treat it as a thing of no value, 
but do not treat as enemies, nor condemn to death, men 
who have done you no wrong ; for we declare to you 
that you will not escape the judgment of God if you 

* " Apol.," I. Opera, p. 72 and following, 
f Iie7reifTfie9a d' Ik daifiovwv fyavXwv. (Ibid., p. 59) 
% 'Aywv i£ovrai yap "i-X eiv v/xas dovXovg Kai VTrtipkraQ, (Ibid., 
p. 61.) 

§ 'QqavKal \r\<JT%\ iv tprjjiia. (Ibid., p. 59.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 113 

persist in injustice. For ourselves, we have but one 
cry : The will of God be done." * 

If Eusebius is to be credited, Justin Martyr was not 
the principal apologist of this period ; by his statement 
the Church found a very unlooked-for defender in the 
emperor himself. In truth, according to this historian, 
Antoninus Pius issued a decree very favourable to the 
new religion. The emperor is said not to have been 
satisfied with forbidding persecution (as in his letters to 
Greece), but to have uttered a magnificent eulogium on 
the Christians. Unhappily, this decree bears no impress 
of authenticity. Antoninus Pius cannot be regarded as 
the Constantine of his age. It w T ould have required 
more courage for such a prince in the second century 
to praise a hated sect, than for an emperor in the fourth 
century to embrace a religion which had then become 
powerful. This famous decree is, then, a fictitious 
creation ; no contemporary writer makes the slightest 
allusion to it.t 

If the Church had passed some tranquil days under 
Antoninus Pius, it might be hoped that she would 
enjoy yet greater security when his adopted son 
succeeded him in the empire. What was there to fear 
from the virtuous Marcus Aurelius ? Did he not raise 
with himself to the throne, the purest and most severe 
philosophy of the ancient world ? He was the model 
emperor, and Gibbon does not hesitate to represent 
his reign as having given to the human race the highest 
possible sum of happiness. In the eyes of the historian, 

* Ovk tKcpev^eaQs rr\v £<ro[xsvr]v tov Qeov Kpiaiv. ("Apologia," 
I. p. 99.) 

f This decree is found in Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. IV. c. 13. It is 
also to be read at the close of the " Apology " of Justin Martyr. 
Melito, to whom Eusebius refers, mentions only the letters sent 
to the towns of Greece. 



114 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

this was the Millennium of the old world. Though 
such an estimate is a gross exaggeration, it is neverthe- 
less indisputable that Marcus Aurelius was a great 
prince. "There was no difference," says Capitolinus, 
" between his government and that of a free city. He 
was in all things guided by a wise moderation, whether 
in warning men from evil, or inciting them to good. 
He knew how to make the evil good, and the good ex- 
cellent.* His custom was to visit every crime with a 
lighter penalty than that determined by the laws, 
though he could show himself inexorable in the case of 
men guilty of grave and flagrant offences. "t One can- 
not but wonder on what grounds Christians were 
classed by this so wise and virtuous emperor among 
those hardened offenders, in whose case he departed 
from his accustomed leniency. Our surprise is re- 
doubled as we read his "Meditations," fragments often 
rising to sublimit) 7 , written or dictated in the rude 
life of camps, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of 
Seneca, but of a logical Seneca, who carries out his 
principle even to the imperial purple. The slave 
Epictetus shows no loftier disdain for the false god 
which the world worships, than this crowned philoso- 
pher, who possesses in profusion all that the world can 
give, but whose heart sits loose to it all. He has 
gathered from the culture of his time all that was most 
elevated and pure ; he breathes that spirit of humanity 
by which Seneca is so distinguished, which relaxes 
the rough Roman severity, and which, if it is not 
Christian charity, borrows from it, or is indirectly 

* "Cum populo autem non aliter agit quam est actum sub 
civitate libera." (" Hist Ang.," p. 27.) 

f " Quamvis nonnunquam contra manifestos et gravium 
criminum reos inexorabilis permaneret." (Ibid., p. 32.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 115 

inspired by it. What cause, then, made Marcus Aurelius 
a persecutor of the Church, and led him to act towards 
it with greater cruelty than even a Commodus or 
Heliogaba-lus ? 

We must first of all admit that under his reign the 
passions of the people, so easily excited, broke out into 
singular violence against the Christians. Plagues, 
which the test government was powerless to avert, 
desolated the empire again and again. Rome was 
visited with a terrible inundation of the Tiber. Earth- 
quakes and epidemics succeeded each other. War was 
raging with unwonted fury in the East and West. 
Marcus Aurelius was kept in constant conflict with 
the Germanic tribes bordering on the empire, and 
at one time the threatened danger appeared to him so 
great, that he enrolled even the gladiators in the army. 
Such a measure was sure to alarm and irritate the 
Roman people, as interfering with one of their favourite 
pastimes. 

Gloom and terror oppressed all hearts. There was a 
vague presentiment that the dominion of Rome would 
expire on the confines of the German forests.* Nothing 
is more cruel than superstition moved to fear. The 
excitement produced by alarm, in a people without true 
religion, turns to the account of fanaticism. Hence 
the outburst of fierce passions in many of the cities. 
To refuse the blood of the Christians, it would have 
been necessary to resist the voice of the multitude — 
that most imperious of all voices — and to resist it when 
its demand was legitimate according to the constitution 
of the empire ; for we must never forget that the legal 
ban laid upon Christianity had not for a single day 

* Milman, " History of Christianity," Vol. I. p. 333. 



Il6 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

been removed. Marcus Aurelius found also too many 
reasons for drifting with the popular current of hatred 
to the Christians, for him to desire to spread the shield 
of his protection over a universally accursed sect. His 
book of " Meditations," in spite of its elevation and 
philosophic tranquillity, unfolds to us the secret motives 
of this aversion. His biography accurately epitomises 
them in these words : " He was of a disposition so abso- 
lutely tranquil, that his features never expressed either 
sadness or joy ; he was a perfect votary of the stoical 
philosophy, which he had received from the best mas- 
ters and had himself fully embraced." * Stoicism and 
Christianity were necessarily and inevitably antago- 
nistic. Two doctrines, apparently somewhat akin, but 
in reality profoundly dissimilar, come into more violent 
collision than those which are in all points opposed. 
The stoical school, the refuge of souls who mistook 
pride for greatness, pretended to be the restorer of the 
ancient world. It encountered in its path a despised 
sect, which, while enwrapping itself as it seemed in the 
mantle of stoicism, and uttering maxims no less austere, 
succeeded where stoicism had failed, and robbed it of its 
influence. Christianity, from its very first contact with 
stoicism, overthrew the scaffolding so laboriously reared, 
and opposed the heroism of holiness to its cold and 
boastful virtue. Stoicism was after all but Roman 
pharisaism. It was, we freely admit, pharisaism free 
from hypocrisy, austere as that of Saul of Tarsus ; 
but its vital breath at Rome, as at Jerusalem, was 
an incurable pride, and it was the natural enemy 
of a religion which had its basis in humility. 
Pharisaism, whether seated in the chair of the doctor, 

* '•' Philosophise deditus stoicse." (" Hist. Ang.," p. 29.; 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 117 

or on the throne of the empire, acts infallibly the part 
of the persecutor. 

We have no wish to detract at all from the moral 
greatness of Marcus Aurelius because he persecuted 
the Church. We recognise the loftiness of his intellect, 
his conscientious efforts to realise the ideal proposed to 
himself, and the nobleness of the sentiments he ex- 
pressed in a style somewhat stiff and pretentious, as 
was his whole individuality. His ideal, however, had 
no true analogy with the Christian ideal ; it was indeed, in 
almost every point, diametrically opposed to it. As the 
basis of his doctrines, Marcus Aurelius had accepted all 
the commonplaces of the stoical school without modifi- 
cation. He shared the scorn of that school for meta- 
physics and for all questions which had no practical 
bearing. He congratulated himself on having early 
learnt to contemn the higher philosophy. Even from 
this point of view, the Christian doctrine, which, to the 
mind of the most simple believer, is full of metaphysical 
mystery, could not but excite his antipathy. He ac- 
cepted unreservedly the fatalistic pantheism of the 
school of the Stoics. " Represent to thyself," he says, 
" the world as an animal composed of one sole sub- 
stance, and one single soul. The substance of the 
universe is obedient, and capable of taking any form. 
The reason which governs it has no principle leading it 
to do evil, for it has no malice ; it commits no wrong 
and can receive no hurt. According to the laws of this 
reason everything goes on in the world."* These words 
are a commentary on Seneca's famous saying : Fata nos 
ducunt. This fatalistic pantheism led logically to a 
proud acquiescence in the decrees of destiny. The sage 

* MapKov' Avrovivov eig kavrbv Bi(3Xia. ("Meditations of Marcus 
Aurelius," VI. 1.) 



Il8 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

set before him the goal of insensibility or absolute im- 
passibility. " Abandon thyself without resistance 
to the Parcae," said Marcus Aurelius, " and let them 
weave into thy life whatsoever they please.* Holiness 
consists in loving that which comes from destiny. t Be 
like a promontory against which the billows break."]: 
The zeal of the martyr, marching like a victor to meet 
death, bore no resemblance to this frigid tranquillity of 
the Stoic sage. " The soul," said the philosophic 
emperor, " ought to be ready when the moment comes, 
either to quit the body, to be extinguished or 
dissolved, or to remain a while longer with the 
body. But this readiness must proceed from calm 
reason, and not from mere obstinacy as among the 
Christians. It must be arrived at with reflection 
and dignity, so as to convince others without declama- 
tion.'^ Thus the Christians, dying for their faith, were 
but fanatics in the eyes of Marcus Aurelius. He speaks 
sometimes of the gods in pious accents, but it is an 
illogical tribute ; for at heart he does not believe in them, 
and doubts of their existence, and a future life is to him far 
from a thing of certainty. " Souls," he says," melt away, 
absorbed into the generative power of the universe. We 
must say of all events : ' This comes of God, this is an 
effect of the natural sequence of things.' "|| The law of 
nature, natural sequence — this is the sole divinity re- 
cognised by him ; and when he seems to render homage 
to less impersonal deities, it is a concession to the estab- 
lished religion, or rather, perhaps, to that inward voice, 
which will never be wholly stifled. His true belief is 
expressed in the following words : "Nature! all comes 

* " Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," IV. 34. 
•f- Ibid., XII. 1. t Ibid -> IV. 41. 

§ Ibid., XI. 3. || Ibid., IV. 2. 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 119 

from thee, all is of thee, all returns to thee."* It would 
seem as if, at times, Marcus Aurelius had grasped 
unwittingly the conception of Christian charity. But 
it is only the expression of his natural benevolence, and 
that benevolence carries with it a large admixture of 
contempt. " How can we be irritated," he says, " with 
those who know not what is truly good or truly evil ?"t 
The pardon of offences is with him only one form of 
stoical impassiveness. "A man conducts himself ill ; 
what matters it to me ? It is his affair ; his actions and 
affections concern himself alone."! Marcus Aurelius 
nobly contradicts himself in these remarkable words : 
"Men are made for one another; rebuke them, then, 
in the wrong, or uphold them in the right. "§ 

We know well that nothing so bitterly excited the 
hostility of the wise men of Judaea to Christianity, 
as the idea of salvation, of grace, and the offer of divine 
pardon. This could not fail also to prejudice the phi- 
losophic emperor against the new religion. In his view, 
faith in one's self was the great essential. The wise man 
is to seek in his own heart the remedy for evil; he is to 
rely entirely upon himself, to repudiate with disdain all 
external aid. " It is enough for us," says the author of 
the "Meditations," "to believe in the spirit within us, 
and to honour it with sincere devotion. || The wise man 
lives in intimate familiarity with Him whose temple is 
within him. This is the divinity which makes him an 
athlete for the grandest of combats. ^[ The bodily life 
is as a river running on ; in the soul all is a vapour, 

* 'E/c gov Travra, sv vol Travra, elg ah Travra. (" Meditations of 
Marcus Aurelius," IV. 23.) 

f Ibid., II. 3. J Ibid., V. 26. § Ibid., VIII. 59. 

j; 'ApKel irpbg fxovq) rfi ivobv kavrov daiixom elvai, Kal roiirov yvr\<jiw$ 
Qipa-rrtveiv. (Ibid., II. 13.) 

% Ibid., III. 4. 



120 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

a vision; life is a warfare, a traveller's sojourn; post- 
humous fame is oblivion. What is there then 
which can serve thee as a guide? One thing alone — 
philosophy; and philosophy consists in preserving the 
spirit within us from all ignominy.* In the midst of this 
pollution and darkness, in this current which is carry- 
ing away matter and time, what is there worthy of such 
great esteem? I see not. On the other hand, we must 
console ourselves, and await death without impatience 
at its delay, on this two-fold consideration: first, that 
nothing will happen to me which is not in harmony 
with the nature of all things ; second, that it is not in 
my power to do anything against my God and the 
spirit that is within me."t 

We can well understand how absurd, on such a system 
as this, must have appeared the doctrine of redemption. 
According to his master, Maximus, Marcus Aurelius 
said: "Man must present in his person the image 
of natural rectitude rather than of reparation. "J It 
would have been impossible to define more sharply the 
opposition existing between Christianity and Stoicism. 
" Consider," said Marcus Aurelius in the same connec- 
tion, "consider that at every hour of the day thou art 
bound to show the firmness of character becoming a man 
and a Roman. Prove thyself, to the divine government 
which is within thee, a manly being, ripened by years, a 
Roman, an emperor, a soldier at his post awaiting the 
trumpet-call. "§ 

Thus seeking salvation within himself, Marcus Aure- 
lius believed he had found it. But here, again, he is 
happily illogical, and allows some expressions of regret 

* " Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," IV. 23. f Ibid. 

X 'AdioujTpoQou fiaXKov r) diopQovfisvov. (Ibid., I. 16.) 
§ Hacnjg wpag <ppovTiZ,t GTi(3apu>g wg Pio/xaiog Kai appr\v (Ibid., 
III. 5.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 121 

to escape him, though even in their modesty there lurks a 
degree of pride. " O my soul," he exclaims, " will the 
day ever come when thou wilt be good, simple, always the 
same ? Wilt thou ever taste the blessedness of loving 
and cherishing men ? Wilt thou ever be rich enough in 
thyself to have no want, no regret?"* This conscious- 
ness of a relative imperfection must not be confounded 
with repentance. " He who sins," again says the 
writer of the " Meditations," " sins against himself."t 
His writings generally evidence an inward satisfaction 
with his own virtue. " How hast thou comported thyself 
unto this day? " he asks himself; " consider how com- 
plete is the history of thy life, how thou hast fulfilled 
thine office. Call to mind all the noble actions which 
have been done by thee, the many pleasures and pains 
thou hast despised, the honours thou hast neglected, the 
ingrates thou hast treated with benignity."! The 
familiar prayer: " Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as 
other men," rises perpetually to the lips of Marcus 
Aurelius, in an infinite variety of forms. § How must 
the wise man and the just, who can utter this proud 
challenge to heaven, be filled with scorn and indignation 
to hear all around him the broken cries of true peni- 
tents, who ask for mercy, and protest by their groans 
and tears against the proud self-righteousness magnify- 
ing itself by their side ! If the Pharisee is all-powerful 
and can crush the Publican with a word, that word 
will be quickly spoken. Here, then, is the explanation 
of the persecution of the Church under the wise and 
virtuous Marcus Aurelius. We may finally remark that 
perhaps no emperor was ever more fully possessed by 

* " Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," XL i. 
j 'O'afiapravbJv kavTifi afiaprdvei. (Ibid.) 
X Ibid., VI. 3. 

§ We find this prayer almost word for word. (Ibid., 1. 13.J 

9 



122 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the idea of the pagan power of the State, or more 
proudly trampled on the rights of the individual con- 
science. He was fortified in this view by his stoical 
pantheism. " The end of reasonable beings," he said, 
" is to conform to whatever is imposed by the reason 
and law of the most ancient and honourable city and 
government."* The same legislation which is sup- 
posed to govern the universe, sacrificing the part to the 
whole, reappears in the State. "Just as thou thyself 
art a complement of the social system, so each of thy 
actions serves as a complement to thy social life. Every 
act of thine, which has no relation, either immediate or 
indirect, to the common end, brings confusion into thy 
life, and takes away from its unity. It renders thee 
factious, just as if thou shouldst break the unity of citi- 
zens in a nation. t That which is not useful to the swarm 
is not of use to the bee. "J It is quite evident that the 
philosophical views of Marcus Aurelius were closely 
associated with his maxims of government, and both 
alike led to depreciation of the individual conscience. 
The quotations we have made from his works seem to 
us fully to explain his attitude towards the Church. § 

We find among the laws of the empire, which are re- 
ferred to his reign, one which, without distinctly 
specifying the Christians, is evidently designed for them. 
It shows the emperor's fixed intention to strengthen 
the religion of the State. . . " The divine Marcus 
decreed," says Modestinus, "that if anyone, by any 
superstitious practice whatever, should alarm the sus- 

* TsXog XoyiKuiv Z,mojv to lireaQai r<£ Tr}g 7r6X((og i:al TroXiTiiag rfjg 
7rpzofivTa~riQ. (" Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,'' II. 16.) 

f "QuTrtp ev 8r)ni>) 6 to ko.9' clvtov /J-Fpog SvvTafxtvog dwo Ttjg roiavTrjg 
av/iKpojveiag. (Ibid., IX. 23). J Ibid., VI. 54. 

§ Neander's "Church History" (Vol. I. pp. 101-103) seems to us 
to idealise Marcus Aurelius too much, and not to take sufficient 
account of the real nature of his principles. 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 123 

eeptible minds of. men, he should be banished to some 
island."* According to a very ancient commentary, the 
penalty of beheadal was substituted for that of banish- 
ment, t Possibly it is correct to refer, as Neander does, 
to the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the decree mentioned 
in the " Acts of the Martyrdom of St. Symphorian," 
according to which, various tortures were to be inflicted 
on the Christians who refused to sacrifice to the gods, 
in order to shake their constancy.^ If such was the 
mind and will of the emperor, it is easy to conceive to 
what a height of violence the fury of a fanatical people 
might rise. Melito of Sardis speaks of vile informers, 
who, taking advantage, doubtless, of these severe de- 
crees, entered the houses of the Christians by night or 
day, and gave them up to pillage. § The same Father 
tells us that those who denounced the Christians were 
promised by the magistrates possession of the goods of 
their victims, and that they commenced proceedings by 
anticipating for themselves the reward of information. || 

* " Si quis aliquid fecerit, quo leves hominum animi superstitione 
numinis terrerentur, divus Marcus hujusmodi homines in insulam 
relegari rescripsit." ("Dig," Bk. XLVIIL, xix. 1, 30.) 

t Gieseler, " Church History," Vol. I. p. 174. 

+ Comperimus ab his, qui se temporibus nostris Christianos 
dicunt legum prsecepta violari. Hos comprehensos nisi diis nostris 
scrificaverunt diversis punite cruciat^us." This decree bears, in 
the Acts of Saint Symphorian, the-name of Aurelianus, but this is 
an evident mistake, for the martyrdom of St. Symphorian did not 
take place under Aurelian. Beside, the manner in which Christians 
are spoken of, carries us back to an early period of their religion. 
It was very easy to confound the two words, Aurelius and Aure- 
lianus ,• this decree may then be attributed to Marcus Aurelius. (See 
Neander, " Church History") [Vol. I. p. 149, Bohn's Ed.] Gieseler 
disputes this opinion on the ground of the unusual form of the 
decree, as if it might not easily have been inexactly reproduced 
in the "Acts of the Martyrs." 

§ Ot yap dvaidelQ GVKotyavTai, rr\v \k tojv SiarayfxaTUJV txovreg acpopurjV 
(pavtpwg \ri<jT£vovcn. (Melito in " Apol. ad Euseb.," IV. 26.) 

II Routh, " Reliq. Sacras," Vol. I. p. 128. 



124 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The persecution thus aggravated prevailed alike in East 
and West. The Christians endeavoured anew to present 
their defence, and to enlighten the minds of their oppo- 
nents. With the Apologies of Theophilus of Antioch 
and of Tatian we do not now concern ourselves, because 
they were essentially doctrinal treatises. Five Apologies 
were presented to Marcus Aurelius; that of Justin, 
which is erroneously supposed to have been the first, 
and those of Miltiades, Athenagoras, Apollinaris, and 
Melito of Sardis. The last of these, after pointing out 
the violence of the informers, simply asks if these in- 
famous men are not abusing the name of the emperor. 
He cannot believe, he says, " that a decree which would 
not have been sanctioned for the treatment of barbarous 
enemies, can have been passed against unoffending citi- 
zens."* Melito then traces back the new religion to its 
source, showing that though it appeared originally in a 
foreign land, it received the rights of citizenship at 
Rome under Augustus. Ithad been a pledge of good to the 
emperor so long as it prevailed in the capital of the em- 
pire. The greatness and glory of the land had increased, 
and thus the honour of Rome was interested in the 
progress of Christianity.? Persecution dated from the 
bad emperors — Nero and Domitian; it was not in har- 
mony with the sound traditions of the imperial govern- 
ment; let there be then a return to the wise moderation 
of Augustus, and the example of Adrian and Antoninus 
Pius. Melito's argument was not wanting in skill. It 
justified the Christians from the dangerous charge of 
drawing down upon the world the scourges by which it 

* Kaivbv tovto tiictTaypa o firjde Kara fiapfiapwv Trpknu TroXtfilojv. 
(Routh " Reliq. Sacrae," p. 116.) 

f MaXiara t% ay j3aai\eia aiaiov ayaObv, iktots yap dg pkya Kal 
Xapnrpdv to pwpaiojv rjvZrjOr] Kparog. (Ibid., p. liy). 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 125 

was desolated. But it must in all candour be admitted 
that it exaggerated the favour once enjoyed by Chris- 
tianity, when it asserted that it had been placed on 
the same level as other religions.* It was at once its 
glory and its peril that it ever formed an exception to 
the universal toleration. 

We shall not enlarge upon the Apology of Athena- 
goras, because it is overladen with philosophical argu- 
mentation. The introduction is not wanting in ability or 
dignity. " The subjects of your vast empire, most noble 
sovereign, differ in customs and laws. No imperial 
decree, no menace held forth by you, prevents them from 
freely following the usages of their ancestors, even 
though those usages be ridiculous. t The Egyptians 
may adore cats, crocodiles, serpents, and dogs. You and 
the laws pronounce the man impious who acknowledges 
no god, and you admit that every man ought to worship 
the god of his choice, in order that he may be deterred 
from evil by the fear of the divinity. Why then make 
exception in the sole case of the Christians ? Why 
are they excluded from that universal peace, which 
the world enjoys under your rule ?" 

Athenagoras, like Justin, complains that vague report 
and the mere name of Christian are made sufficient 
ground for condemnation. He demands a bond fide 
inquiry, and proceeds, in default of that, to present a 
refutation of »the three main charges of atheism, murder, 
and infamy, perpetually laid against the Christians.! If 
these crimes are proved, Athenagoras urges that they be 

* 'B.v Kai o'l irpoyovo'i gov Trpbg rcug aXkcug OprjaKeiaig tTij-irjaav. (Routh, 
u Reliq. Sacrae," p. 117.) 

f OiiSdg abrCJv v6jx<f Kai (popy StKtjg, Kav yi\ola y, firj orkpytiv tcl Trarpia 

eipyercu. (Athenagoras, in the Cologne edition of " Justin Martyr," 
p. I.) T Ibid., pp. 4, 5. 



126 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

visited with severest punishment; but let the cause at 
least be heard, and let justice weigh in an even balance 
accusers and accused. 

In order to disprove the charge of atheism, Athena- 
goras enters upon a long philosophical discussion, 
which exhibits a singular blending of Christianity 
and Platonism. Upon the second head, his reasoning 
is more close and conclusive. "I know/' he says, 
"that our justification is already established by what 
I have previously said. You cannot but believe 
that men who keep their eye steadily fixed upon God, 
as the standard of all goodness, that they may them- 
selves become holy and unblameable, will shrink from 
even the very thought of crime. If we believed 
only in the present life, we might be suspected of 
serving flesh and blood, avarice and lust. But we 
know that by night as well as by day, we have God as 
the witness of our words and thoughts; we know that 
our God is light, and that He reads the very secrets of 
our hearts. We believe that after this earthly life there 
begins for us either a better life or a miserable existence 
amidst devouring flames, if we have followed the ex- 
ample of the wicked."* Athenagoras eloquently points 
out the strangeness of the part enacted by the accusers 
of the Church, who, covered as they themselves are with 
all infamy, yet dare to call in question the purity of the 
Christians. 'Is there not here an application of the old 
saying: "The harlot accuses the woman of modest 
life " ?f The harlot is pagan society with all its impuri- 
ties ; the modest woman is the chaste spouse of Christ. 
As to those feasts of Thyestes, to which the celebration 
of the Eucharist was likened, Athenagoras appeals on 

* Athenagoras, Cologne edition of "Justin Martyr," p. 35. 
•j- "H 7c6pvr\ Ttjv ow&pova. (Ibid., p. yj.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 127 

the one hand to the horror of the Christians at the 
shedding of blood, which kept them away from the 
representations in the circus, and on the other hand to 
their belief in the resurrection of the body, which 
would be utterly incompatible with any such abomi- 
nation. This Apology is remarkable, in that the 
defence - of the lives of the Christians is presented 
from the doctrinal point of view ; but we do not find in 
it the same firmness of language as in that of Justin, and 
it contains too many pompous eulogies on the emperors. 
Of the Apology presented to Marcus Aurelius by 
Apollinaris, Bishop of Hieropolis, no portion remains.* 
That of Justin we possess entire. It abounds more 
than the former in philosophical digressions, which 
would have been more appropriate in an apologetic 
treatise than in a petition to the emperor. We have 
already mentioned the circumstance which called it 
forth. A question had arisen about the condemnation 
of a Christian woman, who had been brought bv her 
husband before the magistrates, because she was re- 
solved to abandon the impure life which was the rule of 
pagan society. Justin renews his protestations against 
the summary judgments passed without sufficient in- 
formation against the Christians. He instances one of 
their most treacherous calumniators, the philosopher 
Crescens, whose base machinations were subsequently 
to bring about his own death. Against the false dealings 
of this man, he adduces the noble words of Socrates : " If 
you respect man, respect truth yet more."t It was 
urged against the Christians that, if they courted death, 
they had only to commit suicide, and they would all 

# St. Jerome, "De Viris Illustrious," c. xxvi. Eusebius, ' ; H. E.,' ; 
Bk. IV. c. 27. 

j- Justin, " Opera," p. 42. 



128 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the sooner come to the enjoyment of their God. Justin 
nobly replies that a voluntary death is an impious 
death, and an act of rebellion against the law of God. 
It was for obedience to that law that the Christians 
were willing to fall a sacrifice. " When questioned, 
we reply frankly, because conscious of our innocence, 
and because it is, in our view, the highest impiety 
not to be in all things faithful to the truth, in order to. 
please God. We thus seek to disabuse you of your 
erroneous ideas about us."* 

To the objection drawn from the sufferings of Chris- 
tians by those to whom all suffering is a mark of the 
divine anger, Justin replied boldly that if the world 
was still preserved, it was for the sake of these despised 
men, the reproach of the empire, and yet, in truth, its 
safeguard ; for they are like the ten righteous men whose 
presence would have saved Sodom. "Without them, 
neither wicked men nor evil angels would any longer exist. 
Without them, it would not be possible for you to do that 
which you do at the inspiration of demons; the fireof judg- 
ment would, but for them, consume all, without dis- 
tinction, "t The courageous Christian does not hesitate 
to summon his persecutors themselves to the bar of 
this terrible judgment. Then, having established the 
superiority of the doctrine of Jesus Christ over all other 
doctrines, he finds one final argument in the objection 
drawn from the sufferings of the martyrs. " See 
Socrates," he exclaims; " no one has believed in his 
words so strongly as to be willing to die for his doc- 
trine ; but for Jesus Christ, whom Socrates but dimly 
discerned, men die every day, and these not only wise 

* 'Acrefikg ds ^yovjiivai firj Kara Ttavra a\t]6eveiv. (Justin, " Opera," 

P-43-) 

f 'E/Tft d fit] tovto rjv, ovk av ovck ravra tTwroi&v. (Ibid., p. 45.) 



BOOK 1. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 129 

men and philosophers, but ignorant men and artisans.* 
These are the athletes and the heroes who should be 
admired rather than trodden under foot." Justin con- 
cludes his "Apology" with a request that the emperor 
would make it public ; he has confidence in the power of 
truth upon the soul of man. " Is there need to appeal to 
any other judge than conscience ? " he exclaims. This 
is to the apologist the court of final appeal ; at this tri- 
bunal, the decrees of Csesar himself may be revoked. 
His conclusion is as follows : "All that is in our power 
we have done for the defence of the truth. May 
all men prove themselves worthy to know it ! May 
your decision, O princes, which after all falls upon 
yourselves, bear the impress of piety and justice. "t 

This language failed to convince Marcus Aurelius, 
and persecution went on with unabated cruelty. Some 
writers of the third and fourth centuries have asserted that 
in the war between the Marcomanni and the Quadi, in 
the year 174, the Roman army, afflicted with a terrible 
drought, was saved by the prayers of a Christian legion, 
which obtained by miracle an abundant fall of rain, and 
that this legion, thenceforth known under the name of 
the Legio fidminatrix, secured the favour of the emperor 
to the proscribed religion. % This story, however, is not 
confirmed by any testimony worthy of credit, and is 
full of historical impossibilities. It is certain that the 
imperial armies did owe their salvation to a violent 
storm ; but while some Christian soldiers doubtless 
attributed the deliverance to their prayers, it is no less 
certain that they failed to make the pagans share their 

* Ov <pi\6(jo<poi, ovSt (pi\o\6yoi, dWd Kai xtiporkxyai. (Justin, " Opera," 
P. 49 j ,,,_.,. 

f Eh] ovv Kai vjjlclq v—sp tavTiuv Kplvai. 1 Ibid... p. 52.") 

t Tertullian. "Apologia." c. iv. ; "Ad Scapulam," c. iv. ; Eusebius, 
"H.E.," Bk.V. c. 3. 



130 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

conviction, for the same event is, on the testimony of 
inscriptions that cannot be questioned, ascribed by the 
emperor to Jupiter and not to Jesus Christ. Nor is 
there any indication of a change in his policy with 
regard to the Christians.* 

In the East, persecution spent its greatest force 
on the city of Smyrna. It commenced, as usual, in 
popular uprisings. Polycarp, whose martyrdom we 
have already described, was the most illustrious victim. 
In the West, the Church of Rome was exposed to 
terrible sufferings. The "Acts of the Martyrs" refer to 
this period the torture of St. Felicitas and her seven 
sons— an instance of heroism surpassing that of the 
mother of the Maccabees. It was especially against 
central Gaul that the fury of the enemies of Christianity 
spent itself. The letter of the Church of Lyons to that 
of Asia Minor gives us an incomparable picture of this 
persecution. t The houses of the Christians were broken 
into by an excited mob, who carried devastation in their 
track. The Christians were thrown in crowds into 
dungeons, and subjected to fearful tortures. Some 
were subdued by the excessive bodily agony, but the 
greater part endured with unshaken fortitude. " They 

* Mosheim (" Commentaria rerum Christian, ante Constant.," 
p. 247-252) divests the pretended miracle of the legion of all vestige 
of probability, on conclusive grounds. He shows that the testi- 
mony of Tertullian \" Apology," c. v.) is vague, that the name fuh/ii- 
natrix belonged, from the time of Augustus, to the same legion 
(Dio Cassius, IV. 23), and that it was moreover not possible that an 
entire legion should at this time be composed of Christians. He 
proves that several medals ascribe the miracle to Jupiter, who is 
proclaimed as the Protector of the Romans in the Antoninus Column. 
He establishes, further, the continuance of persecution to the close 
of the reign. (See also Neander, Vol. I. pp. 116, 117 [Eng. Trans., 
p. 159-161, Bonn's Ed.].; and Routh, "Reliq. Sacrse," Vol. I. p. 164 ) 

t See this letter in Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. V. c. I, 2, 3. See 
also Routh, " Reliq. Sacrae," Vol. I. p. 293. 



BOOK I. — THE CHyRCH AND THE EMPIRE. I3I 

know that, possessing the love of God, they have 
nothing to fear, and they count all suffering light when 
the glory of Christ is concerned."* It might seem that 
they had become insensible to sorrow, so convinced 
are they that " the sufferings of the present time are 
not to be compared with the glory to be revealed in 
them." Calm and intrepid before the bar of their 
judges, they confess the name of Christ with heroic 
courage, as often as their voice can rise above the 
clamour of the crowd. The Christian Sixtus gives 
repeated and astonishing proofs of steadfastness amid 
unparalleled agonies. Not content with wreaking on 
the bodies of the Christians themselves the refined bar- 
barity of Roman torture, the magistrates put the slaves 
of Christians to the rack to obtain some evidence against 
them. Indignant at so iniquitous a proceeding, Vettius 
Epagathus, a distinguished citizen, who had hitherto 
kept secret his adhesion to the faith of Christ, took up 
the defence of his accused brethren, and at the inquiry 
before the proconsul acted as advocate for the Christians, 
well knowing that by so doing he subjected himself to 
the sentence of death. t When the odious and stupid 
charge was reiterated, that the Christians renewed the 
feasts of Thyestes, and sacrificed little children in the 
celebration of their mysteries, Attalus, one of the 
accused, whose body had been already lacerated with 
tortures, flung in the face of his judges this terrible 
rejoinder: "It is you who devour human flesh. "J Both 
old age and tender youth showed indomitable courage. 
The Bishop Pothinus, trembling under the weight of 

* MrjCev tyofiipov 7rarpbg ayaTry, fJ.r]de cikyuvov otvov XpiGTOv t>o'£a. 
(Routh, " Reliq. Sacrse," p. 303.) 
f Ibid., p. 298. 
J 'Idov tovto icTLv &v9pu)7rovQ kcQinv. (Ibid., p. 31 5.) 



132 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ninety years, replied to the magistrate who asked him 
what god he worshipped : " Thou shalt know Him when 
thou art worthy."* Covered with wounds, he was cast 
into prison, where in two days he expired. Blandina, 
the young slave-girl, triumphed in the midst of all tor- 
tures, and inspired her brother, of the same tender years, 
with her own enthusiasm and courage. This child of 
fifteen, frail and weak by nature as others, displayed 
extraordinary moral power; neither tortures nor wild 
beasts could make her falter. The Christians feared for 
her, but it was she who strengthened their faith. Before 
the whole circus, full of a howling crowd, in view of the 
gaping mouth of the lion, she stood calm and smiling; 
and. that calm smile of the poor slave was the boldest 
challenge ever hurled at the material omnipotence of 
the pagan empire. t This strong defiance, coming from 
the servile dust in which the slave had been wont to 
crouch till Christianity proclaimed the rights of 
conscience, made heathen society learn with a thrill 
of dread that the humblest believer in Christ is a 
power not to be ignored. " God shows us in this young 
slave," we read in the letter of the Christians of Lyons, 
"that His choice rests upon that which seems to men 
most vile, contemptible, and ignoble. "J 

There came a momentary pause in the persecution. 
The proconsul found himself embarrassed by the num- 
ber, and sometimes by the quality of the captives, for 
many were Roman citizens, and the majesty of that 
name might not be profaned, even when associated 
with the vile name of Christian, by their condemnation 
to ignominious punishment. The emperor, when inter- 
rogated on this matter, replied that the Roman citizens 

* 'Eav yg a£iog yvibcry. (Routh, " Reliq. Sacras," p. 306.) 
f Ibid., p. 315. X Ibid., p. 301. 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 133 

who persevered in their faith were to be beheaded, 
apostates released, and all other accused persons sub- 
jected to the extreme penalties of the law. This order 
was rigorously carried out, and floods of Roman blood 
flowed in the prisons. The accused belonging to the 
lower classes perished in the arena, amidst the plaudits 
of the multitudes, and even Blandina, of whom the very 
wild beasts at first seemed to stand in awe, fell at last a 
victim. The brief time of respite was used by many 
Christians (who had proved for a season untrue to their 
faith) in retracing their apostasy. They astonished 
the people by this return of courage, which did not 
again fail in the face of death. The persecution raged 
with equal violence at Vienna in Gaul, and at Autun, 
where Symphorian perished for refusing to worship the 
goddess Cybele. The martyrs of this period were remark- 
able for their great humility, joined with a lively joy 
altogether devoid of fanaticism. They refused even to 
be called martyrs, as not worthy of the name.* They 
did no more, they said, than follow the Lamb whither- 
soever He went,t and first of all to the altar of sacrifice. 
They were distinguished by a majesty and beauty more 
than human, and their bonds seemed the jewels of their 
sanguinary espousals. £ Their various agonies were to 
them as the weaving of a wreath of divers flowers to be 
offered unto God the Father,§ from whom they looked 
to receive the crown laid up for the victor in the fight. 
The death of Marcus Aurelius, which was a calamity 



* Ovt£ [Xi)v rjjMV iTrkrpnrov rovrcp rip bvofxan 7rpo<rayopsi>£iv dvrovg. 
("Reliq. Sacrae," p. 320.) 

f 'Ako\ov9u>v t(£> apvi^., ottov av inrctyy. (Ibid., p. 298.) 

I Ibid., p. 308. 

§ ' E/c SictipSpoJV yap xpojfxaTOJV Kal Travroiiov avQu>v 'iva 7r\e%a.vTtg arkfyavov. 

(Ibid., p. 307.,) 



134 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to the empire, was a deliverance to the Church. Corn- 
modus, the frenzied tyrant who brought back the worst 
days of the early Caesars, showed himself tolerant 
towards the Christians. Persecution, if not absolutely 
suppressed, was greatly modified, and received no fresh 
impetus from imperial decrees. Marcia, the favourite 
mistress of Commodus, appears to have been, if not posi- 
tively attached to the Church, at least well disposed to 
the new religion. It is probable that before her eleva- 
tion to her throne of shame, she had been among the 
proselytes. She remained ever the protector of her 
former co-religionists, and, according to St. Hippolytus, 
even succeeded in gaining the recall to Rome of a large 
number of exiles, who had been banished to work in the 
mines in Sicily.* Irenaeus mentions that there were 
many Christians at the court of Commodus in the en- 
joyment of large liberty. t The old statutes against 
their religion had not, however, been repealed, and the 
Church still numbered several martyrs, among others 
the Senator Apollonius.J Antoninus, a proconsul of 
Asia Minor, who sought to revive the persecution, was 
deterred from doing so by the number of Christians who 
thronged to his tribunal voluntarily to surrender them- 
selves. He contented himself with apprehending a few, 



* 'H MapKia ovaa (pikoOsog epyov tl ayaQbv IpyaaaoBai Qi\r]aa<ya. 
(" Philosophoumena," p. 287.) See also M. de Witte's article 
entitled, " Du christianisme de quelques imperatrices romaines," 
p. 5. Paris, 1853. 

f " Contr. Hceres.," IV. 30. 

% Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. V. c. 21 ; Hieronym., "Catol," c. xlii. 
Neander, relying upon this last witness, asserts that Apollonius 
was denounced by his slave, and that the latter was put to death 
for laying information against his master. (Vol. I. p. 201.) [Eng. 
Trans., p. 163, Bonn's Ed.] But Gieseler brings forward passages 
of Roman law which set aside this supposition. A slave who proved 
the charge he brought was not put to. death. (Gieseler, Vol. I. p. 177.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 135 

saying to the rest : " Wretches, if you desire to die, you 
have rocks and ropes at hand." * 

The Church which was engaged throughout this 
period in such stern struggles with enemies without, 
had to maintain an equally severe conflict with foes 
within. Heresy, of which we have already noted the 
indications, and of which we shall follow the pro- 
gress^ is no longer in this, as in the first century, a 
vague and formless thing. Its various characteristics 
are clearly defined. While the Judaising sects are 
passing through a crisis, which, separating the mode- 
rate from the fanatical party, will finally issue in the 
development of Ebionitism, Eastern Gnosticism is yet 
more surely corrupting Christian doctrine by its wild 
and fantastic speculations — the thin veil cloaking a 
fatalistic Pantheism. At Alexandria, Basilides (a.d. 
125) and Valentine exerted in turn an extraordinary 
influence; the latter endeavoured to establish his school 
at Rome about the year 140. The Gnostics of Syria 
professed a more open dualism than those of Egypt. 
The Church of Antioch had to resist Saturnin, that of 
Edessa to oppose Bardesanes and Tatian. The latter, at 
first a disciple of Justin Martyr, finally became a heretic. 
Marcion, son of the Bishop of Sinope, was the author 
of a system superior in many respects to the speculative 
theories of the other Gnostics, but not less ' destructive 
of the foundation truths of positive Christianity. At 
Rome he encountered Polycarp, who denounced him in 
a terrible apostrophe as a child of the devil. 

In the year 170, a fanatic sect, preaching the most 

* ( Q Seikol, d 6s\eTe cnro9v)i<jic£iv t Kprjfxvovg ff (3p6xovg £X £rf « (Tertul- 
lian, " Ad Scapulam," c. v.) 

•t- We shall consider the great heresies in detail in a subsequent 
volume devoted especially to this subject. 



136 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

rigid asceticism, arose in Phrygia. It blended with a 
very sincere piety much of the extravagant superstition 
of that country. Montanism, founded by the Phrygian 
Montanus, profoundly agitated the Church of the second 
century. It made its appearance at Rome towards 
the end of that period, and there performed an 
important part. The Church itself was also torn with 
internal dissensions, apart from heresies. The deter- 
mination of the Easter festival was a question which 
divided East and West. The Bishop of Rome excited 
a lively resistance, when he endeavoured to enforce his 
own practice on the whole Church.* On this occasion, 
towards the close of the second century, were held the 
Synods of Cesaraea and of Lyons, which foiled for the 
time this ambitious project. 

* We shall enter subsequently into details of the internal dissen- 
sions in the Church. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CHURCH OF THE EMPtftE, FROM THE COMMENCE- 
MENT OF THE THIRD CENTURY TO CONSTANTINE. 

§ I. The Syrian Princes. (193-235.) 

After the murder of Commodus, the Empire was 
shaken with profound convulsions, creating what seemed 
anarchy even in that age of social disorganisation, 
when every accession to the throne was signalised, as a 
matter of course, by sanguinary conflicts. The imperial 
purple, after adorning for a few honourable days the 
virtuous Pertinax, was put up to auction by the soldiery, 
and bought by Didius Julianus, who had no security 
for keeping it, when once the last gold piece of the 
appointed price was paid, and the Pretorians had ceased 
to regard him as a solvent debtor. While Albinus was 
proclaimed by the legion of Britain, and Niger by the 
legion of Syria, Septimus Severus, at the head of the 
army of Illyria, advanced upon Rome, avenged upon 
the Pretorians the death of Pertinax, and after attack- 
ing in succession both his competitors, re-united the 
whole empire under his dominion. (197.) Under cover 
of the troubles arising out of this war of the succession, 
the enemies of the Church found more than one occa- 
sion to let loose upon it the unchained passions of the 
people, no longer under the restraint of any organised 
authority. Clement of Alexandria tells us that every 
day the blood of innocent Christians flowed in torrents, 

10 



I38 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

that they were burned, crucified, and beheaded."* Ter- 
tullian's address to the martyrs belongs to these stormy 
days, when persecution, without any fresh authoritative 
sanction, constantly burst forth at all points under the 
pressure of popular fanaticism. Tertullian designed to 
raise the courage of the Christians, and to pour the bright 
beams of hope into the dark # dungeons where they were 
suffering in crowds. " O ye blessed captives," he wrote, 
''grieve not the Holy Spirit who has entered with you 
into the prison. In truth, if He had not entered with you, 
you yourselves would not be there to-day. The prison 
is the devil's house in which he lodges his family. You 
have only entered it that you may tread him under foot 
in his own abode, as you have already trampled on him 
in crossing the threshold. . . . Suffer him not 
to say, ' They are come into my home ; I will tempt 
them with base disputings and envyings ; I will pro- 
voke them to defection and dissension.' Your peace is 
deadly war with him." Setting in vivid contrast the 
world from which the confessors have come out, and 
the dungeon into which they have entered, Tertullian 
shows them that in reality the worst of prisons is this 
accursed world. " Deeper is its darkness, heavier the 
chains with which it binds the immortal soul. It num- 
bers more captives than the most crowded prison ; does 
it not hold in bondage the whole human race, which 
is cited, not to the bar of a proconsul, but before the 



* 'Hf.uv de atyOovoi fiaprvpa>v 7rr}yal iica(TTi]Q r)fj.fpaQ IV 6(p9a)<[xoliC y/iiov 
Qzwpoi'uzvai TrapoTrrojfxtvwv, dvaaKtvdaXenofjisvcov, rag Ke<pa\ag cnroTt- 
ixvofikvuv. (Clement of Alexandria, " Stromates," II. XX. 125.) 
Neander (" Antignosticus," p. 17) establishes very clearly the date 
of the first books of the "Stromates," for Clement does not carry 
the chronology of Roman history beyond the end of the reign -of 
Commodus. ("Stromates," I. 21 ; II. 139.) We may conclude, 
therefore, that Septimus Severus had not yet ascended the throne. 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 139 

judgment-seat of .God?"* "Your cell is dark," he says 
again, "but you are its light. You are in chains, but 
you are the Lord's freedmen. You are summoned 
before a judge, but you shall judge your judges. t The 
prison, like a sacred retreat, hides from the prisoner the 
sight of evil. There he prepares himself to resist unto 
blood. It is not from a couch of ease men go forth to 
fight. J If the athlete submits to severest discipline, 
shall the Christian athlete complain of the painful pro- 
cess to which he is subjected, — he, who is led into the 
arena by Christ Himself, and anointed with the holy oil 
of the Spirit? God is his judge, eternity his crown. 
Courage grows strong by enduring hardness ; it faints 
in ease and luxury. § What ! shall the Christian hesi- 
tate when earthly glory has made so many heroes who 
have not shrunk from death, and when death, ever 
at hand, may at any moment carry us off by the most 
common accident?" 

These manly exhortations were well adapted to en- 
courage the hearts of the prisoners, and to impart to them 
at once the firmness which makes the soul strong to 
endure, and the enthusiasm which raises it above suffer- 
ing and transfigures even the most terrible of tortures. 
They would sorely need such support, as persecution 
became more hot and cruel. The new emperor was at 
first well disposed towards the Church. It appears that 
he had been cured of a serious malady by a Christian 

* " Plnres reos continet, scilicet universum hominum genus, 
judicia denique non proconsulis sed Dei sustinet." (Tertullian, " Ad 
Martyr.," c.ii.) 

t " Habet tenebras sed lumen estis ipsi, habet vincula sed vos 
soluti Deo estis. Judex expectatur, sed vos estis de judicibus ipsis 
judicaturi." (Ibid.) 

t " Nee de cubiculo ad aciem procedit." (Ibid., c. iii.) 

§ "Virtus duritia extruitur, mollitia vero destruitur." (Ibid.) 



140 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

named Proculus, who, according to the custom of the 
early Church, had prayed over him, anointing him with 
oil.* He kept his benefactor in the palace as long as he 
lived, and it was perhaps at the instigation of Proculus 
that he chose a Christian nurse for his son Caracalla. 
He was too much preoccupied with serious matters at 
the commencement of his reign, to devote much atten- 
tion to the persecution of the Church, which gave him, 
moreover, no cause for disquietude, as in these trouble- 
some times the Christians had distinguished themselves 
by their submission to the laws and avoidance of all 
sedition. Determined even to hardness, a despot rather 
than a tyrant, bent on breaking down all opposition, 
uniting much narrowness of mind with indomitable re- 
solution, Severus was a man who, both from his good 
and bad qualities, was liable at any moment to become 
a formidable persecutor. He had a strong tendency to 
superstition, and his passing leniency towards Chris- 
tianity was owing, no doubt, to the fact that he regarded 
it as a high form of magical art, effecting marvellous 
cures by new incantations. It would be easy to turn in 
a contrary direction, sentiments so little in harmony 
with the new religion, sentiments, too, which would find 
ample scope in the paganism of the day. It was after a 
journey into Asia Minor and the East, that a change of 
disposition became observable in the emperor. It is 
ascribed in part to the violent fanaticism of the sect of 
the Montanists, which had spread widely in Syria, and 
which, by proclaiming the approaching destruction of 
the empire and of the world, suggested the idea that it 
might take an active part in the fulfilment of its own 
sinister prophecy. It is more reasonable to regard, as 
the first cause of the renewal of persecution, the impres- 
* Tertullian, " Ad Scapulam," c. iv. 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. I4I 

sion produced upon Severus by his travels in the East, 
which was then the nursery and hotbed of all manner of 
superstition. He could not with impunity be brought 
into contact with the priests of those ancient religions, 
the secret of whose success lay in the obscurity in which 
they were involved, suggesting that in their deep mys- 
teries there might be found satisfaction for all the 
aspirations of the soul. Egypt was always the land of 
magic and mystery ; it had become to the world that 
which Eleusis once was to Greece. The worship of Isis 
and of Osiris, still more that of Serapis, which, like the 
worship of Ceres and Proserpine, seemedto'illuminatethe 
dark kingdom of death, and to facilitate the transit from 
this life to another, drew innumerable adherents, among 
whom the emperor Severus took his place.* The priests 
did not fail to use their influence upon so powerful a 
disciple, to stir up his hostility to a religion the progress 
of which alarmed them, and which offered the calm 
shining of a sure hope, in place of the false and fitful 
gleams which they shed upon the tomb. It is possible 
that a special circumstance tended to aggravate the 
danger of the Christians. Public games were being 
celebrated in Africa with great pomp, in honour of the 
triumph of the emperor over his rivals, and for the first 
time the Pythian games were performed at Carthage. 
Some writers think that it was on this occasion Tftertul- 
lian wrote his treatise, " On the Spectacles," in which he 
demonstrates, with his usual vehemence, that the duty 
of a disciple of Christ is to abstain from these cruel pas- 
times, which were so often shameful, and always stained 
with idolatry, and which were proscribed, if not by the 
letter at least by the spirit of the sacred writings. This 
treatise of Tertullian's, which belongs at any rate to 
* Milman, "History of Christianity," Vol. I. p. 35. 



I42 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

this period, proves that the more earnest Christians had 
conscientious scruples about attending the games in the 
circus. Their absence, irritating to their countrymen, 
who regarded it as an indirect condemnation of them- 
selves, might easily be misconstrued to the emperor 
or his proconsuls, especially when these public feasts 
were of a political character.* 

These various circumstances sufficiently account for 
the revival of persecution. Severus, on his transit 
through Asia Minor (a.d. 203), issued a decree, which 
by condemning the propagation of new doctrines, and 
change from one religion to another, aimed a direct 
blow at a faith which lived by proselytism.t The 
decree of Trajan, which proscribed the very name of 
Christian and laid it under the ban of the law, seemed 
to render fresh penal measures unnecessary. The 
measures taken, however, contributed constantly to 
aggravate persecution by giving the judges new 
counts of indictment. Trajan had intended only to 
punish Christianity in its undeniable manifestations. 
Septimus Severus struck at it in its mode of propaga- 
tion, in its missionary activity, and he put the magistrate 
on the track of minute inquiries full of peril to the 
Church. It seems that at first some proconsuls 
showed a spirit of toleration, and endeavoured to save 
the Reused, whom they knew to be innocent, sometimes 
inflicting a slight penalty, sometimes condemning them 
on a charge to which the punishment of death w r as not 
annexed.^ Encouraged by this disposition to leniency, 
many Christians tried by various methods to escape the 



* Munter, " Primordia Ecclesiae Africanse," p. 198. 
t " In itinere Palasstinis Judaeos fieri sub grave poena vetuit. 
Idem etiam de Christianis sanxit." (" Spartianus." c. xvii.) 

J This may be inferred from chap. iv. of the Letter to Scapula. 



BOOK I.— THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 143 

impending sentence. Some bought safety by paying a 
sum of money, either to the informer who was about to 
betray them, or to the soldier who came to seize them, 
or to some corruptible and interested judge, of whom 
there were many in the pagan tribunals.* Tertullian 
expressed himself with just indignation against such 
proceedings, in his treatise on " Fleeing from Persecu- 
tion," written at this period, and already strongly imbued 
with the exaggerations of Montanism. " Can anything," 
he says, " be more unworthy of God and of His work, 
of that God who spared not His own Son for thee, than 
to ransom with a few gold pieces a man who has been 
redeemed with the blood of Christ ? The sun grew pale 
before the splendour of our redemption; our freedom 
was wrested from hell and covenanted in heaven. The 
everlasting doors were uplifted that the King of Glory 
might come in — the Lord of all power and might, who 
had won man back for heaven from earth, nay, rather 
from hell. Who is the madman who will fight against 
Him? Who will degrade and sully that which He has 
purchased at the dear price of His most precious blood? 
Flee, rather than sell thyself so cheap, setting so low a 
price upon that which Christ has so highly esteemed. 
What! shall a Christian be saved by money? Shall his 
gold redeem him from suffering? Would not this be to 
be rich against his God, while Christ poured forth His 
own blood for him?f " This shameful bargain is true 
simony, and in reply to the excuse urged that it was a 
Christian duty to pay tribute to Caesar, Tertullian 
replies by this noble utterance: " If I owe tribute to 

* " Pacisceris cum delatore vel milite, vel furunculo aliquo 
praeside." (Tertullian, " De Fuga in Persecutione," c. xii. 1.) 

t " Adversus Deum erit dives ; at enim Christus sanguine fuit 
dives pro illo." ^Ibid.) 



144 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Caesar, do I not owe my blood to God, in return for that 
of His Son shed for me?"* 

The writer had less foundation for his reproaches of 
the Christians and Christian bishops, who in great 
numbers sought safety from persecution in flight. 
This they did often from a sense of their own weakness, 
fearing lest they might, in the trying hour, fall into 
apostasy. In this respect they were justified in appeal- 
ing to the example and precept of Jesus Christ, who 
Himself, on various occasions, retreated from places 
where danger threatened, saying that His hour was not 
yet come. The ardent polemic, in rebuking them by 
the maxims of a fearless and reckless boldness, spoke 
rather at the dictation of fanatic zeal than of Christian 
wisdom, which, while it encourages true heroism, never 
fosters temerity. When Tertullian adduces in support 
of his position, the blessings derived by the Church from 
persecution, in renewed zeal and deepened piety, t he 
proves too much ; for, logically starting from such a 
principle, he ought to go on to say that the Christian 
should not use any remedies in sickness, since sickness, 
too, is salutary discipline. To assert that to flee from 
apostasy is tantamount to having already apostatised, 
is an inexcusable exaggeration. Tertullian comes back 
to the limits of sound Christian reason, when he de- 
clares that he cannot sanction any discontinuance of 
worship by the members of the Church on account of 
persecution. " If thou - canst not gather the flock together 
by day," he says, " thou canst by night ; Jesus Christ 
will be a bright light to thee, dispelling the darkness. 
If all the brethren cannot meet together, where three 

* " Quid autem Deo debeo, sicut denarium Cassari, nisi sangui- 
nem. quern pro me Alius fudit ipsius ?" (Tertullian, " De Fuga in 
Persecutione," c. xii.) f Ibid., c. i. 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. I45 

Christians are in a company, there thou shalt find a 
Church."* 

At the commencement of the persecution under 
Severus, a strange circumstance occurred, which called 
forth a new treatise from Tertullian, characterised by 
the same exaggeration. A Christian soldier had refused 
the crown of laurel, which the legionaries were accus- 
tomed to carry before the emperor in token of joy, when 
'they received some fresh gift from his munificence. 
Opinions were divided in the Church about this act ; 
it was forbidden by the illustrious African in terms of 
extravagant reprobation. Full of sarcasm and bitter- 
ness against those timid Christians who are lions in the 
days of peace, and lambs in the day of battle, t Tertullian 
scornfully sets aside their objections. The tradition 
of the Church, he says, if not Scripture itself, is opposed 
to a custom so essentially pagan. £ Nature, which is 
also a divine volume, made the flowers to adorn the 
fields and perfume the air, not to wither in a garland 
curiously twined by the hand of man. No saint or 
prophet wore a crown, and the crown of Christ was of 
thorns. § Beside, these military garlands represented the 
mourning of widows and the tears of mothers, and the 
Christian should not forget that he has brethren among 
the pagans. From these considerations, Tertullian, as a 
consistent Montanist, argues the incompatibility of piety 
with military service. He sums up his views in this 
lofty utterance, admirable indeed if only applied with 
discernment : "Faith acknowledges no plea of necessity." || 

* u Si colligere interdiu non potes, habes noctem. Sit tibi et in 
tribus Ecclesia." (Tertullian, " DeFuga in Persecutione," c. xiv.) 

t "In pace leones. in praslio cervos." (Tertullian, " De Corona 
Milit.." c. i.) X Ibid., c. iii. § Ibid., c. iv. 

|| " Non admittit status fidei allegationem necessitatis." (Ibid., 
c. xi.) 



I46 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

While thus making full allowance for a certain ex- 
travagance in the severity of Tertullian, we cannot fail 
to perceive that there was at the commencement of 
this persecution, some relaxation of Christian courage. 
The Church showed itself more concerned than for- 
merly to avoid danger : it was more prudent. This 
disposition, lawful in itself if only it can be harmonised 
withfcinflexible adherence to duty, needed to be carefully 
watched, the more so as the Christians found at their 
side dangerous sophists, ready to supply cowardice with 
all the subterfuges of a subtle and perverted exegesis. 
The Gnostics, those proud contemners of Christian 
simplicity, claimed to be the representatives of truth 
everywhere, except in the circus and at the stake, and 
they directed their polemics against martyrdom. These 
spiritual men, with all their boasted freedom from 
fleshly bonds, would not expose to torture and the 
flames, the body they so affected to despise. But 
neither were they willing that others should take the 
palm, the cost of which held back their own shrinking 
hands. Their insidious arguments, into which the 
sacred text w r as freely woven, might shake the con- 
stancy of Christians, or, at least, tend to relax or to 
corrupt what might be called the public spirit of the 
Church, which lends the strongest impulse to individual 
devotedness. Tertullian felt it his duty to unmask 
these miserable sophistries in his treatise "Against the 
Gnostic Scorpions." It is plain from the vitupera- 
tive appellation thus given to the heretics in the very 
title of his book, in what a spirit of bitterness he entered 
upon the contest. He was not wrong in supposing that 
there was peril for the Christians of his day in these 
sophistical arguments. If he errs in this treatise by 
magnifying the value of martyrdom at the expense of 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 147 

the great doctrine of free salvation, * we are bound, 
nevertheless, to recognise and approve its general 
purport. He shows, with his usual ability, that nothing 
is more conformable to the will of God than suffering 
for truth. The Divine words which proclaim the 
blessedness of those who thus suffer, are as applicable 
to every age as is the promise of the Holy Spirit given 
with them, t The formal interdiction of idolatry ren- 
ders martyrdom inevitable, and this should be no ground 
of complaint, for it is a heroic remedy against evil. To 
die for the Gospel, is to fall into the hands of God, 
there to find supreme blessedness. J The annals of the 
truth upon earth are but one long martyrology, From 
its earliest manifestation it was met with hatred. § Its 
progress may be tracked through the world by the 
bleeding footprints it has left. This is true from Abel 
to Paul, who bought a second time with his blood at 
Rome his right to the citizenship. This is supremely 
true of the Divine Master, and Tertullian shows, with 
touching eloquence, how His cross is a sacred legacy 
to all who are His. || Having disposed of the absurd 
notion .of the Gnostics, that confession of the name of 
the Saviour was to be made in a world higher than 
ours, he refutes the more specious objection derived 
by them from the duty of submission to the civil autho- 
rities. He points out that we owe obedience to the 
sovereign only so long as he abides within his own 
domain, and does not demand divine honours.^" " Let 
us suppose, for a moment," he says, " that the letters 



* Tertullian, "Contra Gnosticos Scorpiac," c. vi. f Ibid., c. ii. 
I " Incedisti in manus Dei, sed feliciter incedisti." (Ibid., c. vi.) 
§ " Statim ut coli Deus coepit, invidiam religio sortitur." 
(Ibid., c. viii.) || Ibid., c. x.,xi. 

% Tertullian, " Contra Gnosticos Scorpiac," c. xiv. 



I48 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the Apostles have lost their natural meaning, does 
not the truth come out clearly from their sufferings ? 
Let us only glance through the Acts of the Apostles. 
What do we see but bonds and imprisonments, scourg- 
ings and stonings, drawn swords, risings of the Jews, 
tumults of the pagans ? This book is, as it were, 
written with the blood of the Apostles,* and, if need be, 
the annals of the empire themselves will cry out like 
the stones of Jerusalem, in confirmation of the testimony 
of Holy Writ. In reading these narratives, I learn to 
suffer." The writer makes large use of the bold reply 
of Paul to the Christians of Cesaraea, who, alarmed for 
his safety by the prediction of Agabus, sought in the 
eagerness of fond affection to detain him, and to hinder 
his going up to Jerusalem, there to meet with bonds 
and perhaps death. Tertullian applies this circum- 
stance with crushing vehemence to those who gave 
to the Christians of his time cowardly counsels of 
defection. He says : "If Prodicus and Valentine 
had presented themselves to Paul in order to sug- 
gest to him that our confession was not to be made 
before men upon earth, because God does not thirst 
for human blood, they would have heard the servant 
of God saying to them, as Christ said to the tempter, 
* Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offence unto 
me."'t 

While he was thus sustaining in the Church the 
cause of martyrdom, Tertullian was pleading the 
cause of toleration with the pagan authorities, in a 
book which, in spite of the inferiority of the lan- 
guage, recalled, while it surpassed, all that ancient 

* " Ipsorum sanguine scripta sunt." (Tertullian, " Contra 
Gnosticos Scorpiac," c. xv.) 

f Tertullian, " Contra Gnosticos Scorpiac.," c. xv. 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 149 

eloquence had achieved of the dramatic and impressive. 
There was wanting, doubtless, that concentrated 
strength, that suppleness and harmony of a perfect- 
style, which distinguished Demosthenes ; nor did he 
display that pure transparency of diction which Cicero 
sustained amid the fiercest storms of political passion. 
In the mere matter of form, we find ourselves, in Ter- 
tullian's writings, in the midst of the period of the 
decline, and the language of his " Apology " shows all 
the defects of the age ; his phrases are broken and 
inharmonious, and he abounds in forced antitheses. 
Nevertheless, we do not hesitate to place among the 
very masterpieces of the human mind this incorrect 
harangue, so mightily is it moved with a great impulse. 
It is the prophecy of the future, the inspiration of an 
ardent assurance. Never did oppressed truth and jus- 
tice utter speech more bold, elevated, and enthusiastic. 
Never did moral superiority more grandly assert itself 
in presence of material might, bent upon crushing it. 
We have here, not only a passionate protestation, but also 
a luminous demonstration, in which the force of reasoning 
equals the vivacity and brightness of the style. Thus, 
while in his other writings Tertullian has too often 
spoken in the name of a sect or a party, in his 
"Apology" he has spoken for the whole Church; 
and in spite of the violent attacks which he subse- 
quently directed against her, she has never forgotten 
the service he thus rendered in constituting himself her 
advocate. 

In a previous treatise, dedicated "To the Nations,'* 
we find the first rough draft of the " Apology," and 
the precious fragments which remain give us the 
first upspringing of the writer's thought, in all its 
freshness and spontaneity. The "Apology " itself first 



150 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

replies to all the charges brought against the new 
religion, and then, taking hold of them, flings them back 
•in the face of paganism, against which they are no 
calumnies. * We postpone to that portion of our book 
which will deal with the philosophical and theological 
apology of the first centuries, all that has reference to the 
exposition, properly speaking, of doctrine, and the argu- 
ments against polytheism and pagan philosophy. We 
regard the ''Apology" now as a judicial plea, not as 
the discussion of a theory. Tertullian addresses him- 
self first of all to that which may be termed the point 
of right. He holds up unsparingly to reprobation the 
mode of procedure pursued towards the Christians, the 
abrogation in their case alone, of all the protective forms 
of justice, and the iniquity of a summary condemnation 
based only upon the presumption of a detested name. 
" Far from seeking the light, the judges use every endea- 
vour to exclude it ; they prefer not to be enlightened in 
that which they are predetermined to hate, t They 
receive against the Christians accusations without proof, 
and will make no inquiry to discover that that which 
they desire to believe has no foundation in fact. Who 
can speak of the respect due to the laws, in presence of 
iniquitous edicts promulgated by the worst emperors, 
and appealed to by men who openly violate laws the 
most ancient and honourable ? What has become of 
the statutes repressing luxury and ambition ? I see 
to-day feasts of a hundred thousand sestertii, called on 
that account centenaries. I see the precious metals 
lavishly used in the service of the table, I say not of 

* It is plain from c. iv., in which Tertullian speaks of a law just 
abrogated by Severus, that the " Apology ,; belongs to the reign o 
that emperor. 

f " Malunt nescire quia jam oderunt." (Tertullian, " Apologia," 
c.i.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 151 

senators only, or of men free-born, but of those who but 
yesterday were slaves. I see theatres multiplied and 
prodigally adorned. I see the same garments worn by 
Roman ladies and by courtesans. Where is piety and 
veneration for ancestors ? You affect neither their 
apparel nor their austerity, neither their maxims nor 
their plainness of speech. You have for ever on your 
lips the praises of the past, while your life diverges from 
it day by day. * That which is of graver moment is 
that the ancient religion is no less corrupted than 
ancient manners ; bear witness all ye divinities of 
Egypt and the East which encumber Rome ! Do 
we not see Serapis and Isis side by side with Jupiter ? " 

Proceeding to the charges laid against the Christians, 
Tertullian reduces them to five heads. The Christians 
are accused, first, of infamous crimes ; but this impu- 
tation rests wholly upon idle rumour, upon the wind, 
upon hearsay. The defender of the Church does not 
condescend to offer any detailed justification in answer 
to such abominable slanders. He appeals to simple 
humanity. " The Christian,'" he exclaims, " is as much 
a man as thou, his accuser." t " Furthermore, it well 
becomes those who practise the infamies with which 
they reproach us. to bring forward such accusations. 
Do not the pagans every day expose their own children ? 
Is not their worship a worship of voluptuousness and 
of blood ? " % 

On the second charge, that of abandoning the gods 
of the empire for a new and strange god, Tertullian 
enters into a. long disquisition. After tracing the 

* u Landatis semper antiquitatem et novo de die vivitis." (Ter- 
tullian, " Apologia/' c. vi. 1 

f " Homo est enim et Christianus et quod es tu." ^Ibid., 
c. xxviii.j J Ibid., c. ix. 



152 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

national worship to its origin, and showing that these 
pretended gods were but men, and men of the worst 
sort, or to speak more truly, demons, since they have 
headed, and still head, a veritable school of crime ; after 
proving that they are in truth despised and ridiculed 
by their worshippers themselves, who have no scruple 
in letting them be made the subject of the buffooneries 
of the theatre, he draws in broad outline the Christian 
doctrine, and sets forth its true beauty.* 

We have already quoted elsewhere his noble reply to 
the charge of rebellion, the third point in the indict- 
ment of the enemies of the Church. In tracing with a 
firm hand the line of demarcation between spiritual 
and secular societies, he maintains the rights of God 
and those of the emperor; and he can without servility, 
and in the name of religious duty, show that the 
Christian scrupulously obeys the laws of the empire, 
that he has no part in the seditions which are con- 
stantly arising, and that he never ceases to pray for 
his persecutors. " The Church, which is no longer a 
small sect, but is spread over the whole empire, knows 
her strength ; if she does not use it, it is because she 
has learned to respect in the temporal powers a divine 
institution." t 

The Christians were told that it was they who drew 
down upon the empire the terrible scourges with which it 
was visited — war, famine, pestilence. " Let us be told 
then," replies Tertullian, " why these plagues did not 
await our coming. The Christian sect had no exist- 
ence when a storm of fire devoured the country around 
Sodom and Gomorrah. The earth is still breathing 
forth the smoke of that conflagration. J There was no 

* Tertullian, " Apologia," c. x.-xxviii. f Ibid., c. xxix.-xl. 
I " Olet adhuc incendio terra." (Ibid., c. xi.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 153 

worshipper of the true God in Rome when Hannibal, 
after Cannae, measured by bushels the rings of the 
Roman knights slain on the battle-field. All your gods 
were adored by all the citizens when the Gauls took 
possession of the Capitol.* No calamity has befallen 
your cities which has not struck the temples as well as 
the ramparts ; the gods could not have been the authors 
of disasters of which they themselves were the victims. 
Cease, then, to attribute these visitations to a senseless 
cause. The crimes of humanity are many enough and 
flagrant enough, to explain the severity of the Divine 
chastisements. Mankind has always merited ill of 
Deity, t If some scourges are spared, it is due to the 
prayers of the Christians ; for, while the pagans aban- 
don themselves to a thousand idle practices, while they 
live on in debauch, while they haunt places of ill-fame, 
and at the same time sacrifice to Jupiter and seem 
to expect the descent of rain from the vaults of 
their temples, the Christians, wasted and w r ounded, 
deprived of all the joys of life, covered with sackcloth 
and ashes, implore grace from heaven ; and yet, when 
their prayers are heard, it is to Jupiter the incense is 
offered. J If it is asked why do these favourites of the 
Deity share in the ills so largely dispensed to the 
world, they reply that these ills touch them not. They 
have no concern for anything in this world, unless 
it be for this one thing — to be speedily delivered from 
it-" § 

* " Omnes dei vestri ab omnibus colebantur cum ipsum Capi- 
tolium Senones occupaverunt." (Tertullian, " Apologia,'' c. xl.) 

f " Semper humana gentes male de Deo meruit." (Ibid.) 

| " Jejuniis aridi et omni continentia expressi in sacco et cinere 
volutantes Deum tangimus, Jupiter honoratur a vobis." (Ibid.) 

§ " Nihil nostra refert in hoc aevo, nisi de eo quam celeriter 
excidere." (Ibid., c. xli.) 

11 



154 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

These considerations bring Tertullian to the refuta- 
tion of the last indictment against the Christians, that 
of withdrawing from common life, and being useless 
members of society. He has no difficulty in showing 
that a Christian remains in the world, though he sepa- 
rates himself from the evil of it. To the objection that 
through the Christians the revenues of the altar are 
diminished, Tertullian replies that the Church cannot 
succour at the same time the mendicity of gods and 
men, and she prefers to distribute to those whose needs 
arc manifest. Let Jupiter stand and beg by the road- 
side, and he shall receive an alms ! Christian charity 
gives larger offerings to the poor in the streets than the 
pagans carry to their temples.* In very truth, he adds, 
it is not our austerity, but your barbarities which 
alienate so many thousands of the citizens. 

Some pages are devoted to the refutation of the prin- 
cipal objections of pagan philosophy. They conclude 
very wisely thus : " Even supposing our dogmas were 
utter folly, they would do no harm to any one ; they 
would, in that case, only resemble many other idle and 
foolish notions, which incur no penalty because they 
are innocent. Such errors ought to be punished by 
ridicule, not by sword and fire, the cross and the wild 
beasts of the arena, "t The peroration of the "Apology" 
reads like the triumphal paean of martyrdom. " I am 
a Christian," says Tertullian, " only because I will so 
to be. You condemn me therefore only at my pleasure. 
If, then, you can only use your power against me by 
my own consent, that power depends in fact not upon 

* " Cum interim plus nostra misericordia insumit vicatim quam 
vestra religio templatim." (Tertullian, "Apologia," c. xlii.) 

t " In ejusmodi errores, si utique, irrisu judicandum est, non 
gladiis et ignibus et crucibus et bestiis." (Ibid., c. xlix.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 155 

your will but mine. Let the crowd applaud our suffer- 
ings as it will. Those sufferings are our triumph, for we 
love rather to be condemned of men than to be forsaken 
of God. Our enemies ought to mourn instead of re- 
joicing, for we have obtained that which we chose.* 
Why complain then, you will say, of a persecution 
which pleases you ? You ought to highly esteem those 
who procure for you these coveted sufferings. We, 
indeed, freely accept our sufferings, we reply, as men 
accept war, which none like for its own sake, but the 
perils and pains of which they readily endure in case of 
need. Though th,ey love not war, nevertheless they fight 
with all their strength, and the conqueror, who at first 
murmured at the necessity to fight, rejoices in the end 
because of the glory and the spoils which he has won in 
the combat. Our battle-field is the tribunal, where we 
fight for truth at the peril of our life. Victory consists 
in gaining that for which men have fought ; our victory 
is the glory of pleasing God, and our gain is eternal 
life. We are put to death; what of that ? Death gives 
us our crown. t Our sacrifice is our triumph, and the 
foe who smites, delivers us. Revile us, if you will, be- 
cause we are bound to a stake and burned with fuel of 
wood. That flaming vesture which enwraps us is our 
purple robe of royalty ; thus it is we gain the palm and 
mount the car of victory 4 We can all understand the 
rage of those whom we have vanquished, and how in 

* •' Ouum vero quod in me potes, nisi velim, non potes, jam 
meee voluntatis est quod potes, non tuae potestatis." (Tertullian, 
" Apologia," c. xlix.) 

j " Sed obducimur certe cum obtinuimus ; ergo vincimus cum 
occidimur, denique evadimus cum obducimur." (Ibid., c. 1.) 

I " Licet nunc sarmenticios et semaxios appelletis, hie est 
habitus victorias nostras haec palmata vestis,tali curru triumphamus." 
(Ibid.) 



I56 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

their fury they treat us as desperate men. And yet 
that which you scoff at in us, you regard as highest 
courage when inspired by fame and love of glory. 
Mutius Scsevola, of his own free will, holds his hand in 
the fire of the altar till it is consumed. Most noble 
Mutius ! Empedocles casts himself into the flames of 
Etna. Heroic spirit ! The foundress of Carthage 
makes herself a victim on the funeral pile to avoid 
a second marriage. O glorious chastity ! Regulus, 
giving his life as a ransom, endures a thousand agonies. 
O true patriot ! conquering captive ! O glory ! (say we) 
owned and lauded because it is human, not regarded as 
the madness of ruined and desperate men, though it 
leads to the contempt of death, and of death's worst 
anguish. You tolerate these sacrifices because they 
are offered for country, for native land, for the empire, 
for friendship ; if they were offered only to God, it would 
be another thing. * To these heroes you erect statues ; 
you make their memory immortal by your marbles and 
monumental tablets ; and so far as it can be done by 
such means, you procure for them a sort of resurrection 
from the dead. But if a man appears, who, in order 
that he may attain to the true resurrection, is ready to 
suffer for God, he is a fool ! Go on your way, O excel- 
lent magistrates, the more excellent in the eyes of the 
people, the more victims you make of the Christians. 
Crucify us, torture us, condemn us, crush us : your 
iniquity is the strongest proof of our innocence. God 
permits that we endure such sufferings. By condemn- 
ing Christian women to dishonour rather than to the 
lions, you prove that the stain of infamy is to us worse 

* " Tantum pro patria, pro agro, pro imperio, pro amicitia 
pati permissum est, quantum pro Deo non licet." (Tertullian, 
" Apologia," c. 1.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 157 

than all tortures.* Of what avail, in fine, is all the re- 
finement of your cruelty, but to add one charm the more 
to our sect ? Decimated by you, we grow in numbers ; 
the martyrs' blood is the seed of the Church. Many of 
your philosophers have uttered noble exhortations to 
the courageous endurance of suffering and death, as 
Cicero in his *' Tusculana ; ' Seneca, Diogenes, and 
Pyrrho in their writings. Their eloquence made not 
so many disciples as the death of the Christians has 
made. This obstinacy with which you reproach them, 
is the most powerful teaching. t Who is there, who, 
in seeing them die, would not be stirred up to inquire 
what there is in their doctrine ? Who, after such an 
examination into it, would not be ready to embrace it ? 
Who, once enrolled beneath its standard, would not 
yearn to suffer for it ? Therefore it is we render you 
thanks for your condemnation of us ; since it is the 
declaration of the war of earth against heaven. Con- 
demned by you, we are absolved by God." % 

The pagan magistracy was not worthy to hear such 
words as these. This Tertullian well knew, and there- 
fore he appealed to a tribunal higher than that of earth, 
which revoked in heaven the iniquitous decrees of 
human judges, before it overthrew the judges them- 
selves, and the whole social edifice of which they were 
the supports. For the moment, no justice was to be 
looked for in the empire ; and persecution, encouraged 
by Severus, went on raging fiercely against the Church. 

* In this sentence there is a play on the words lena and leo, 
which cannot be brought out in a translation. 

-f- " Nee tamen tantos inveniunt verba discipulos quantos 
Christiani factis docendo. Ilia ipsa obstinatio quam exprobratis 
magi stra est." (Tertullian, " Apologia," c. 1.) 

I " Ut est aemulatio divinse rei et humanse, cum damnamur a 
vobis a Deo absolvimur." (Ibid.) 



I58 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

It broke out first in Egypt. The earliest blows fell 
upon the flourishing Church of Alexandria.* Surrounded 
with powerful enemies, who were irritated by its pros- 
perity, it drew all eyes upon itself by its great school 
of apologists recently founded. The Christians from 
all points of the country flowed into the metropolis of 
Egypt. They came even from the depUhs of the desert, 
there to suffer martyrdom. Leonides, the father of 
Origen, was put to death in this persecution. A young 
woman, named Potamisena, of singular beauty, who had 
resisted all solicitations and importunities, was distin- 
guished by the firmness she maintained in the presence 
of her judges. She was moved neither by the threat of 
torture, nor by the thousand-fold more terrible threat of 
being given up to the gladiators, well knowing that if 
they could injure the body, they could not defile the 
soul. Basilides, one of the soldiers who led her out to 
suffer, was profoundly impressed by her calm courage 
in the midst of terrible anguish ; he protected her 
against the vile outrages of the crowd, up to the very 
moment when she was thrown into the boiling pitch. 
A short time after he saw in a dream the young virgin 
smiling and triumphant, and she placed upon his head 
a crown, telling him she had prayed for him.t He 
understood at once at what price he must really win 
the offered crown. He embraced the first opportunity 
to confess his faith before his comrades in arms, by 
refusing to take a pagan oath. This was to devote 
himself to death, and in a few days he was with Pota- 
misena'in the presence of the Lord. 

* MaXiora tTckr}Qvev, Ik AXe^avdpeias. (Eusebius, " H. E.," Bk. VI. 

f ~NvKT(op 'nrioTaaa or'ttyavov airov ry ice<pa\y TrepiOeXaa tit], (pair} re 
7rapaKuc\r}ickvai x<xpiv avrov rbv Kvpiov. (Ibid., C. 5.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 159 

The persecution was even more violent in proconsular 
Africa than at Alexandria. Everything tended to 
render it there peculiarly sanguinary. The Christian 
Church had, in the course of a few years, made extra- 
ordinary progress in that region. It had so increased 
as to threaten open peril, or to be at least a formidable 
enemy to the old religion of the empire. The African 
population had retained an element of barbarism under 
the outward forms of an advanced and corrupt civilisa- 
tion. Violent and fanatic, it was bitterly hostile to the 
Christians. Its passions, heated under an African sun, 
rendered it insatiable in voluptuousness, furious in its 
hatred. It was more open than any other nationality to 
the influence of low superstitions, to the sorceries of the 
magicians, and to the infamous and cruel religions of 
the East, which had never wholly disappeared from its 
midst, and which were constantly springing afresh into 
life. Nowhere did persecution assume more decidedly 
the character of a tumult or popular rising.* The pro- 
consul Saturninus took the initiative even before he was 
constrained to do so by the decree of Severus.t The 
first martyr was a poor slave of Punic origin, named 
Nymphonius. In the year 200, many Christians be- 
longing to the little town of Scillita, were brought to 
Carthage, to appear before the tribunal of Saturnin. 
There were among them many women. Speratus, who 
spoke in the name of his brethren, was enabled, by the 
frankness and nobleness of his Christian spirit, to foil 
all the artifices of his captious questioner, to mark his 
respect at once for the laws of God and for those of the 

* See Munter, " Primordia Ecclesise Africanse/' p. 165-200, for 
information as to the state of Africa and the commencement of this 
persecution. 

f " Vigellius Saturninus qui primus hie gladium in nos egit." 
(Tertullian, " Ad Scapulam," c. iii.) 



100 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

emperor, and to exhibit that union of gentleness and 
heroism, which is the distinctive trait of the true 
martyr. Speratus, when invited by Saturninus to swear 
by the genius of the emperor, replied that he knew not 
what was that genius ; that for his part, he served the- 
God of heaven, the King of kings, whom no man hath 
seen or can see, and that he prayed to Him for his 
sovereign, but could not do more without falling into 
idolatry. He remained immoveable, as did his com- 
panions in captivity ; and when the proconsul offered 
him three days for reflection, he exclaimed that neither 
three days nor thirty would witness in him any change. 
The sentence of bsheadal was pronounced and im- 
mediately executed.* Some years later, when the 
persecution had become general, one group of martyrs 
attracted especial observation. In it were found several 
female catechumens, who were in the flower of youth ; 
and among others, two frail, delicate women, one of 
whom, Perpetua, the daughter of a pagan father and a 
Christian mother, bore in her arms a new-born child ; 
while the other, named Felicitas, was on the eve of 
motherhood. It was a piteous sight to behold the one 
nursing the tender infant at her breast in the wretched 
dungeon, and the other bringing her first-born into the 
world upon a noisome bed of straw. Perpetua was 
reserved for yet more heartrending trials. The horrors 
of captivity could not break her peace and joy of mind ; 
we have already adverted to the glorious visions which 
lightened the darkness around her. One great solace 
was granted to the prisoners. The deacons of the 
Church had succeeded in administering baptism to 
them, and now they found their way, by using golden 
bribes, into the cells of the captives, and carried to 
* Sec Ruinart's " Acta Martyrum." 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. l6l 

them the holy communion. No tortures could avail to 
shake the steadfastness of these young women. The 
tears and supplications of a father were more hard to 
bear, because the grief of the old man made its appeal, 
not to the lower elements of human nature — the love 
of life and of ease — but to the highest and purest 
natural affections. Greater than Antigone, the Chris- 
tian daughter, who in other circumstances would have 
made any sacrifice for a father, could yet, with a heart 
more deeply wounded by his grief than was her body 
by the instruments of torture, sacrifice the most sacred 
human affection to that stronger attachment which, 
with a holy jealousy, admits no hesitation and no 
reserve. This, as we have already observed, was the 
most bitter drop in her cup of sorrow. No words can 
describe the anguish she must have felt when the old 
man threw himself at her feet, kissing her hands and 
watering them with his tears, while he besought her to 
give him back his child. " I weep," she exclaimed, 
" over the white hairs of my father. I groan because 
he is the only one of my family not to rejoice in my 
death. Know," she went on, "that we are not our 
own. We are in the hands of God." When, a few 
days after, at the festivals in honour of the proclama- 
tion of the young Cassar Geta, she came forth with the 
other prisoners to fight with the wild beasts before a 
furious multitude, she suffered less from their rough 
embrace than she had endured under the caresses of 
her father. Her companion in captivity, the young 
Felicitas, revealed the secret of her heroism, when, in 
answer to her gaolers, who told her that the anguish 
of child-birth, aggravated as it was by prison horrors, 
would be as nothing to the agonies awaiting her in the 
circus, she replied : " Now it is I who suffer; but then 



l62 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

another will suffer for me, because I shall be suffering 
for Him." 

Septimus Severus left the empire, in the year 211, to 
his two sons Caracalla and Geta. This naturally gave 
rise to a deadly conflict between them, which could only 
be terminated by the violent death of one or the other. 
Caracalla, who had been on the eve of parricide, was 
not likely to cherish a more tender regard for the life 
of his brother. When he had achieved his criminal 
purpose, and through the blood of his brother mounted 
to the throne of the world, he gave the rein to all his 
vicious passions. He was another of those mighty 
madmen, who had all the treasures and armies of the 
empire at command to do their wild behests. Person- 
ating now Achilles and now Alexander, the imperial 
actor went from place to place, giving representations 
which cost the people dear, and which were frequently 
turned into scenes of blood; as at Alexandria, where, as 
a punishment for some epigrams made at his expense, 
he slaughtered thousands of the unarmed citizens. 
This wretched and vile madman (who fell at length by 
the hand of Macrinus, a prefect of the guards) gave 
the sanction of the Roman legislature to the great 
social progress attending the onward movement of 
thought, in his famous decree according the rights of 
citizenship to all the free men of the empire. He thus 
broke down for ever the narrow barriers of the old 
nationalities.* The Church again enjoyed some respite 
during his reign, either because the Christian nurse, 
by whom he had been brought up, had favourably 
disposed him towards the new religion, or because, 

* See the very novel commentary on this important measure in 
" L'Histoire del'Eglise et del'Empire au quatrieme siecle." (M. de 
Broglie, Vol. I. p. 31.) 



BOOK I.— .THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 163 

absorbed in his own follies, he had no leisure to attend 
to it. We cannot ascribe to Caracalla the persecution 
which raged in Africa in the year 211, under the pro- 
consul Scapula, and which called forth the eloquent 
letter of Tertullian to that governor, already mentioned 
by us as the noblest vindication of religious freedom ; that 
persecution was merely the continuation of the severe 
measures following on the decree of Severus. The 
epistle to Scapula is a concise, powerful epitome of the 
"Apology; " it defines with more clearness and vigour 
the rights of conscience, and flings back yet more 
boldly the challenge to the persecutors. " As for our- 
selves" (thus the letter opens), " we neither blanch nor 
tremble before the ills inflicted on us by those who 
know us not. The first condition for every one who 
enrols himself in this sect, is that he venture his life in 
the field ; we have but one desire, to attain to that which 
God promises ; we have but one fear, that of the pains 
of another life. All your cruelty cannot make us flinch 
from the conflict ; we go forth to meet it, and are more 
happy when you strike than when you spare. If, then, 
we send you this epistle, it is not that we fear for our- 
selves ; it is rather for your sake, who are our enemies.* 
Nay, what say I ? you are our friends; for we are bound 
to love our enemies, and to pray for them that despitefully 
use us and persecute us ; and herein is manifest the 
great virtue of our religion, for all men love their friends, 
but only Christians love their enemies. For your 
sake, because we grieve over your ignorance, and are 
filled with pity for human error, — because we know the 
future in store for you, and see every day the precursive 

* " Itaque hunc libellum, non nobis trimentes misimus, sed vobis 
et omnibus immicis nostris nedum amicis." (Tertullian, "Ad 
Scapulam," c. i.) , 



164 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

signs of its approach, — we feel it incumbent to warn 
you by letters of that which you refuse to hear from 
our lips." * 

A rapid refutation of the charges brought by 
the pagans, gives a keener point to the conclusive 
reasoning of the "Apology," and the author yet more 
distinctly asserts the liberty of religion. After showing 
that the Christian is not a sacrilegist, and in no way 
resembles those miserable men who rob the gods of the 
empire in their own temples, all the while they are 
swearing by their name ; after proving that he is no 
seditious person, since he calls upon God for the em- 
peror, and offers the incense of his prayers to heaven 
on his rulers' behalf, Tertullian proceeds from the 
defensive to the offensive, and warns his persecutors of 
the impending wrath of Heaven, if they persevere in 
their evil course. " Has not the barrenness of the soil 
been a visitation for the prohibition recently laid upon 
the Christians to visit the tombs of their martyrs ? 
Have not the torrents of rain in the past year 
menaced the earth with a second deluge ? Have not 
wandering lights been seen by night on the walls of 
Carthage ? Have there not been fearful mutterings 
of thunder ? These are so many precursive signs of the 
anger of Heaven." t That anger has already fallen 
upon the persecutors, as Tertullian proves by astonishing 
facts, and he concludes with this bold apostrophe : 
" As for thee, Scapula, we desire that the present sick- 
ness may be but a warning. Remember that it came 
upon thee after thou hadst delivered Adrumeticus 

* " Qui ergo dolemus de ignorantia vestra et miseremur erroris 
humani et futura prospicimus et signa eorum quotidie intentari 
videmus necesse est vel hoc modo erumpere ad proponenda vobis 
ea quae palam non vultis audire." (Tertullian, " Ad Scapulam/' c. i.) 

f " Omnia haec signa sunt imminentis irae Dei." (Ibid., c. iii.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 165 

Mavil to the wild beasts."* "The Christians, inno- 
cent of the crimes with which they are charged, die for 
justice, chastity, loyalty, and truth. They are burned 
for the sake of the living God. If they were all to be 
extirpated, every family would be clothed in mourning." 
Again he exclaims-: " Spare Carthage, spare thyself. 
We have but one master, that is God. He is above 
thee ; He cannot be hidden, and thou canst do Him no 
harm. Those whom thou callest thy masters are men, 
and will soon die ; while this sect is immortal, and 
thou art only building it up while thou wouldst fain 
destroy it." t 

The comparative security enjoyed by the Church 
under Caracalla continued during the two following 
reigns. Macrinus, the assassin of Caracalla, had but a 
brief rule of two months. He suffered not for his crime, 
but for his endeavours at reform ; and after him (a.d. 
218) the imperial crown passed to a young man, who, in 
the frame of an Apollo, carried a soul stained with all 
vice and infamy. This was Heliogabalus, great-nephew 
by his mother of the Empress Julia Domna, the wife of 
Septimus Severus. His name was borrowed from the 
Syrian god, whose high priest he was, and who, like all 
the great Oriental deities, was no other than the sun, 
the god of fecundity and of sensuous life. The reign of 
Heliogabalus was a wild bacchanal in honour of his 
impure idol. Nothing is more indicative of the fearful 
disorganisation of the age, than this open triumph of the 
old religion of Asia, celebrated at Rome itself by a suc- 
cessor of Augustus. It is the revenge of the East over 

* Tertullian, " Ad Scapulam," c. iii. 

f " Magistrum neminem habemus nisi Deum solum. Hie 
ante te est. Ceterum quos putas tibi magistros, homines sunt et 
ipsi morituri quandoque. Nee tamen deficiet hae.c secta, quam tunc 
magis asdificari cum casdi videtur." (Ibid., c. v.) 



166 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the victorious West — an unworthy revenge, which only 
sullies that which it cannot supplant. Heliogabalus 
had a splendid temple built upon Mount Palatine for 
the Syrian deity. Thither he carried with great pomp 
the infamous symbol of his god, and all the ancient 
divinities of the empire were to form the train. Mars, 
Vesta, the Palladium — all that was held sacred at Rome 
— was transported to this sanctuary of abominations.* 
Before long Heliogabalus sought in his native country 
a consort for his god ; he found one worthy to hold such 
a position in the ancient goddess of Asia and of Car- 
thage — the Phoenician Astarte, who was honoured by 
murder and prostitution ; and the nuptials of the Sun and 
Moon were celebrated with great magnificence from one 
end of the empire to the other. It is easy to conceive 
what must have been the feelings of those Romans who 
cherished the spirit of the past, when they beheld such 
spectacles, and were perhaps constrained to take part in 
them. We see in Heliogabalus a striking demonstra- 
tion of the fact, that the religions of nature, left to their 
own course, end in the destruction of all that is natural. 
The laws of nature present to us an image of the moral 
world; they show the workings of the rule of order and 
obligation in this lower sphere. When the moral 
idea has been absolutely repudiated, law in any form 
becomes obnoxious, whether in the domain of nature or of 
conscience. Men take pleasure in infringing it ;• law- 
lessness is delighted in for its own sake. Hence the 
boundless extravagance, the indulgence of unnatural 
passions, the universal disorder, and the wild orgies of 
the reign of Heliogabalus. This young priest of the 
sun, arrayed in woman's garments, surrounded by a 

* " Studens omnia Romanis veneranda in illud transferre tern- 
plum." (Lamprid., "In Heliog.," c. iii.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 167 

seraglio of youths, feasting upon such epicurean dainties 
as the tongues of nightingales, loving only infamous 
pleasures, was the faithful representative of the religion 
of Asia carried to its full consequences and to its last 
excesses. His predilection for everything Eastern, 
and his hatred of the West, predisposed him favourably 
to Christianity, of which he knew orrly this one thing, 
that it had been persecuted by the religion which he 
desired to destroy. It even appears that he had some 
notion of embracing, in the worship of the sun, all the 
religions of the earth, and specially that of the Jews 
and Samaritans, and of the Christian sect.-* He 
imagined that as they were nurtured almost in the 
same cradle, these religions were also akin in their 
principles. If he had lived longer he would have soon 
learned his error, and the Christian Church would 
have infallibly become the object of his senseless fury. 
It was worthy to be hated by such a monster of 
iniquity, t 

The successor of Heliogabalus was Alexander Severus, 
who appeared a second Marcus Aurelius, with less of 
severity and pride. The cousin of Heliogabalus through 
his mother Mammsea (by whom he had been trained up 
in every virtue) the new master of the world brought back 
the first days of the empire. The portrait drawn of 
him by his biographer is full of a melancholy charm. 
We feel that his noble aspirations are checked by insur- 
mountable obstacles. The renovation of the empire 
had become an impossibility, and the imperial power, 
so terrible for evil, was impotent for good. It was not 

* "Dicebat praeterea Judaeorum et Samaritanorum religiones et 
Christianam devotionem illuc transferendam ut omnium cultura- 
rum secretum Heliogabale sacerdotium teneret." (Lamprid., "In 
Heliog./' c. iii.) 

f See Milman on the reign of Heliogabalus. 



l68 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

by a decree that the Senate could be restored to its true 
dignity; it needed to be cured of its deep-seated corrup- 
tion. By attempting to restore discipline in the army, 
an emperor imperilled his personal safety, and devoted 
himself to certain death, as is proved by the premature 
end of Alexander Severus. Any restoration of religion 
was even more impracticable than political reform. It 
was vain to think of substituting for the popular super- 
stition a religion more elevated but still impotent — ■ 
such as was the religion of the more distinguished 
spirits of the time — a religion which united in a com- 
prehensive eclecticism the best elements of the various 
religions of the past. Alexander Severus could do no 
more than open a little private chapel devoted to the 
objects of his own veneration, while the most hideous 
gods of Egypt and of Asia had gorgeous temples at 
Rome. It is well known that he set up in his palace 
statues to Orpheus and to Abraham, to Apollonius of 
Tyana, and to Christ, * to whom, indeed, he was dis- 
posed to dedicate a temple ; t he thus rendered homage 
to the various influences then dividing the minds of 
men. He honoured at once the old Jewish revelations, 
and the ancient mysteries of Greece idealised in the 
person of Orpheus. He placed on the same level the 
mystical magic of an Eastern ascetic and Christianity ; 
but this strange combination showed that the emperor 
had no true knowledge of the new religion. He may 
have been so struck with some of the beautiful maxims 
of Gospel morality, such as this, " Do unto others as 
ye would that they should do unto you," as to have 

* " Matutinis horis in larario suo, in quo et divos principes, sed 
optimos, electos et animas sanctiores, in queis et Apollonium et 
quantum scriptor suorem temporum dicit, Christum Abraham et 
Orphoeum rem divinam faciebat." (Lamprid., " In Heliog." c. xliii.) 

f " Christo templum facere voluit." (Ibid.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 169 

them inscribed in letters of gold on his palace walls ; 
but he could have had no conception of the real basis 
of the doctrines of Christ. He went no further than 
that syncretic paganism which found its true exponent 
in neo-platonism. Heliogabalus had raised to the throne 
of the world, the corrupt and cruel genius of Babylon 
and of Ephesus. Alexander Severus elevated to the 
same dignity the genius of Alexandria, with its mystical 
theosophy and comprehensive universalism, but also 
with its subtlety and powerlessness. Nevertheless this 
very universalism was propitious to the Church, which 
found in Alexander Severus a just protector. His 
mother Mammsea had some interviews with Origen. 
Alexander himself decided in favour of the Christians, 
in the case of a requisition, made without just cause, by 
some tavern-keepers at Rome, that a spacious house in 
which the Christians met for worship might be closed. 
This was a very marked indication of the toleration at 
this time enjoyed by them. The emperor declared 
that it was better that a god, be he who he might, 
should be worshipped in that house, than that it should 
fall into the hands of the tavern-keepers. * He thus 
recognised the existence of the Church, t He so much 
admired its constitution that he was desirous to intro- 
duce into the administration of the empire the mode of 
election used by the Church in the designation of its 
pastors. "He intended," says Lampridius, "to give 
governors, magistrates, or procurators to the provinces, 
and in order to ensure reasonable appointments to such 
offices, he proposed their names, challenging any 
charges which could be brought against them, and 

* " Rescripsit melius esse, tit quomodocunque illic Deus colatur, 
quam popinariis dedatur." (Lamprid., " In Heliog.," c. xlvii.) 
f " Christianos esse passus est." (Ibid.) 

12 



170 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

threatening death to calumniators. He said that it 
would be a serious reproach if Jews and Christians 
acted thus in the election of their priests, while no such 
form was observed in the case of the governors of pro- 
vinces, to whom are entrusted the goods and the life of 
men." * But neither this admiration nor this tolera- 
tion of the new religion conferred on it the freedom 
of the city, or gave to it a legal status in the empire. 
The decree of Trajan, far from being abrogated, was 
maintained, and the juris-consult Ulpian carefully 
recorded it in his book, " De Officio Proconsulis." t 

Under the reign of the Syrian princes, the Church 
was greatly troubled by the Montanist dissensions, 
which caused much agitation in Italy and in Africa. 
We shall see that at this time the hierarchical 
system became consolidated at Rome, but not without 
calling forth severe struggles, of which the treatise of 
Hippolytus upon heresies, recently discovered, and 
falsely attributed to Origen, has preserved to us a 
memorial, vivid and pathetic almost to passion. The 
Gnostic tendency is no longer headed by such men as 
Valentine and Marcion. Theodotus and Cleomenes 
represent it at Rome, and find momentary countenance 
from some of the high dignitaries of the Church. 

§ II. The Church of the Empire, from Maximin the 
Thracian to Diocletian. 

Maximin the Thracian (235-238), the murderer and 
successor of Alexander Severus, was naturally in- 

* " Dicebat grave esse cum id Christiani et Judsei facerent in 
praedicandis sacerdotibus, qui ordinandi sunt, non fieri in provincia- 
rum rectoribus, quibus et fortunas hominum committerentur et 
capita." (Lamprid., " In Heliog.," c. xlix.) 

f Lactantius, " Institut.," Bk. V. c. 11. Neander, " Church His- 
tory," Vol. I. p. 126. (Eng. Trans., Bohn's Edit., p. 174.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 171 

clined to visit with his enmity the favourites of his pre- 
decessor. He was a giant, predisposed to all deeds of 
violence, alike by his physical and mental constitu 
tion. His first act was to condemn to death several 
Christians, who had formed part* of the household of 
Alexander. The persecution was aimed primarily at the 
bishops, whom the new emperor regarded as the chiefs 
of a hostile faction, attached by gratitude to the person 
of his victims.* Beyond this, the persecution was not 
of extraordinary violence. It was local, and therefore 
left open to the Christians the possibility of flight. t 
Special circumstances contributed to render it more 
cruel in Pontus and Cappadocia. Fearful earthquakes, 
swallowing up entire cities, had revived the fury of a 
fanatic people always inclined to impute such visitations 
to the new religion.^ " We have seen," says Origen 
in his Commentary, written shortly after these events, 
"persecution breaking out afresh upon the Church in 
consequence of some earthquakes which spread great 
desolation, and which were attributed by the impious to 
the Christians. Even those who appeared wise men 
joined in repeating this accusation in public. § It was 
at this same period that Origen wrote his "Exhortation 

* "Og 8rj Kara kotov tov 7rpbg rbv 'AXe^uvdpov oJkov ek TrXetovojv ttigtiZv 
ovviGTwra, ^n»y\i.bv kyeipag, tovq tojv kiac\?icnu>v apyovrag fiovovg, 
avaipuo9anrpo<JTaTTU. (Eusebius, "H. E.," Bk. VI. C. 28.) 

t " Erat transeundi facultas eo, quod persecutio ilia non per 
totum mundum, sed localis fuisset.'' (Firmilianus, apud Cypriani. 
"Epistol.," Epist. lxxv.) 

I " Ut per Cappadociam et per Pontum qusedam etiam civitates in 
profundum receptee dirupti soli hiatu devorarentur, ut ex hoc per- 
secutio quoque gravis adversus nos Christiani nominis fieret." 
(Ibid.) 

§ Origen, " Commentary on Matthew/ Vol. XXVIII. (Delarue 
Edit., Vol. III. p. 859.) 



172 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to Martyrdom," * on the occasion of the imprisonment 
of his friend Ambrosius and of the priest Protoctetus. 
This treatise was no doubt designed to be read in all 
the prisons where the Christians were confined. Such 
manly counsels wefe in truth needed, for the moral 
enervation, to which we have already alluded in speak- 
ing of the persecution under Severus, had become yet 
more prevalent in the Church during a time of repose 
and even of favour, which had drawn into its bosom 
many adherents of doubtful constancy. The crucible 
of trial, which was once again to be held over the 
heated furnace, would act as a salutary purifier and 
refiner. But even faithful Christians had not breathed 
with impunity the tainted air of indifference. They, too, 
needed to be sharply warned, and Origen's treatise was 
for them a thrilling reminder of the ancient heroism of 
the Church. We shall not enlarge here on its special 
tenets ; these we reserve for our exposition of his 
theology. We shall only now advert to that which was 
intended to brace the hearts of the Christian captives. 
Origen commences with general reflections on the 
shortness of the sufferings of the present life compared 
with the glory to come, and on the blessedness of a 
speedy death, which, delivering us from the body, re- 
moves from before our eyes the heavy veil which hides 
from us the vision of God.t He then sets forth the 
superiority of martyrdom over all other forms of death. 
While other men are often found willing to suffer for. a 
particular virtue, such as sobriety, wisdom, justice, the 
Christian dies for nothing less than God Himself. I 
How carefully then must Christians be on their guard 

* Redepenning, " Origines," Vol. II. p. 15. 

t "Ad Martyr.," c. ii. 

% Ilept rrjg tvotfidaQ [xovov to IkkKsktov ayojvi£ercu ykvog. (Ibid., C. V.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 173 

against any sort of abjuration, even should it present 
itself in the most modified form. Apostasy is the worst 
description of adultery, for it severs the soul from the 
heavenly Bridegroom, who loves it with holy jealousy,* 
and joins it to him for whom the faith of Christ is 
abjured. The alliance contracted between the soul and 
God, rests on certain conditions, which are summed 
up in complete devotedness to Christ. t " Our self- 
renunciation should go so far that we may be able to say, 
1 It is no more I that live.' Then we shall have truly 
taken up our cross to follow Christ ; and thus it will be, 
if He indeed lives in us. Those who are favoured 
with this world's goods, as was Abraham, will find in 
their riches the means of offering to God a more com- 
plete sacrifice, to be compensated to them a hundredfold 
by that which He has in reserve for them. Just as those 
who have passed through torture, and manifold suffering, 
and pains, have shown in martyrdom more special and 
signal virtue, than those who have experienced no such 
trials; so those who have broken the bonds of ease and 
self-indulgence, being moved by a great love for the 
God from whom they have received the sharp and two- 
edged sword of the immortal word, have, by this very 
renunciation, taken unto themselves eagles' wings on 
which to mount to the house of their Lord." % In 
setting forth the glories of martyrdom, Origen rises to 
an eloquence which reminds us of Tertullian, without, 
however, losing that higher power of thought by which 
he is ever distinguished. We have already quoted the 
noble passage in which he represents all heaven atten- 
tive to the conflict of the humble confessor, often 

* <£?7<7i irpbg T))v viifi(pi]v yp v X , ) v Q £ °G dvai ZqXdJTijg. ("Ad Mar- 
,j/\," c. ix.) t Ibid., c. xii. 

X KaracTKevaaarTsg tavroig Trrkpvyag wcnrsp aerog kTTiarpkipai rig rbv 
oIkov roi) Trpoear^KOTog tavrwv. (Ibid. C. xv.j 



174 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

scarcely noted upon earth. He depicts in glowing 
colours the heroism of the great servants of God 
under the old covenant, and in particular that of the 
Maccabees, whose courageous mother he sets before us, 
calm and intrepid in view of their suffering, because, in 
her own poetical words, the dew of piety quenched 
within her the ardent flame of a mother's grief.* The 
example of the Divine sufferer is finally held forth to 
His fainting disciples. Let them never, in the midst 
of sorrow and reproach, lose sight of the triumph 
which awaits them ! " Let us not marvel, if before 
attaining to that blessedness, to that untroubled peace 
and calm, we should have to pass through a rough, 
wintry storm. When the winter is over, when its 
showers have fallen, the flowers will appear, and the 
righteous shall flourish, planted in the house of their 
God. t The hatred of the world gives no ground for 
surprise ; none who have not passed from death unto 
life can love those who have attained to this divine life, 
and who, from the dark abode of the dead, have been 
brought into the habitations of light, where God dwells.^ 
The day of the Christian's triumph has already risen 
upon us, § for by our glorious sufferings, endured with 
Christ, we tread under our feet principalities and 
powers. Let us show greatness of soul in all that 
befalls us." After some lengthened dissertations on 
demons, and on the purifying virtue of martyrdom, 
Origen returns to the main current of thought in his 
book with these words : " We have heard the words of 

* Apbaoi tnvtfieiag to itvtv\ia ogiottjtoq ovk limv avairTtoQai iv toXq 
oTrXayXvoiQ to jxriTpiKovTcvp. (" Ad Martyr.," c. xxvii.) 

f Mera de to irapeKQeiv top xei/xwva, radvOr) o<pQr)aeTai. (Ibid., C. xxxi.) 

t Ibid., c. xli. 

§ 'EvecFTr] t)fuv tcaipbg xP l(TTiav ^ )V Kavx r l a£iliv ' (Ibid.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 175 

Jesus Christ, and we have long embraced the Gospel. 
The present conflict will show what is our foundation — 
whether we have built upon the solid rock or on the 
unstable sand ; for lo ! the tempest is coming upon us, 
the rain and the wind and the floods. Either our house 
will stand unshaken, becausebuilt upon the rock, which 
is Jesus Christ, or its fall will prove its unsoundness. 
God preserve our building ! for apostasy is a fearful 
downfall, and as St. Luke says, ' The ruin of that house 
is great.' Let us then ask God that we may be like 
the wise man who built his house upon the rock. Let 
the evil spirits which are abroad in the air, let the 
authorities and powers of the world, storm like a deluge 
against a house thus built ; let the fierce winds of 
the powers of this generation blow upon it ; let hell 
itself dash against the rock which supports such a 
building, and they will give less convincing proof of 
their own violence, than of the firmness of- our house, 
which cannot be shaken." * 

Origen and his contemporaries were destined to 
witness the bursting of a more terrible storm upon the 
Church than the persecutions of Maximin, who fell in a 
tumult under the walls of Aquileia. There were a few 
intervening days of calm under the reign of Philip the 
Arabian. This emperor had dyed his purple robe in the 
blood of the young Gordianus, who had been for a brief 
instant saluted emperor after the violent death of his 
father and grandfather, and in consequence of the 
murder of Maximin and of Balbinus, whom the same 
senate had appointed successors to the first Gordians. 
(244.) Philip the Arabian was favourable to the Chris- 
tians, for the same reason which had induced Maximin 

* "Iva jxr) jxovov irpbg to fir) TnceXv, aXKa firjdk vaXevOijvai tt)p apxr\v 
oidav. (" Ad Martyr.," c. xlviii.) 



176 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the Thracian to persecute them ; he was tolerant out of 
hatred to his predecessor. This was not enough, how- 
ever, to make him a Christian. We cannot, therefore, 
attach any credibility to the story of his conversion, 
even though Eusebius relates (without, however, 
pledging himself to its truth) a very ancient legend, 
representing the emperor as standing knocking at the 
door of the Church, and as being, for his crimes, sent 
back into the ranks of the penitents, by the bishop to 
whom he addressed himself. * Though he was in com- 
munication with Origen, and received a letter from him, 
it is certain that he never embraced Origen's faith. It 
would be impossible to reconcile with his admission 
into the Church, the solemn celebration of the mil- 
lennarian games which took place in his reign in 
honour of the foundation of Rome (247), and which was 
necessarily accompanied with many pagan ceremonials. 
Splendid as were these games and spectacles, they 
could not disguise the internal decay of a tottering 
empire, which knew no law but that of force and brute 
violence. Foreign invasion was perpetually threaten- 
ing its borders, and fire and sword had failed to 
extinguish the religion, which was to triumph over the 
ruins of ancient Rome. It was sinking under the weight 
of those thousand years of paganism of which it so 
proudly boasted. Philip the Arabian was succeeded by 
the senator Decius Trajan, who, being entrusted by him 
with a large armed force, raised the standard of revolt, 
and defeated Philip at Verona. Decius, as emperor, 
made one more effort to re-establish the shaken and 
tottering empire. He embraced the policy of Trajan 

* Eusebius only says : 'O \6yog icare^t. See a very clear 
discussion of the question of Philip's conversion in Mosheim, 
" Commentar. De rebus ante Constant ," p. 472. 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 177 

and Marcus Aurelius, and of this policy, persecution 
was one of the leading features. It would now naturally 
be carried on on a yet wider scale, on account of the 
progress made by Christianity, and of the growing disre- 
gard of human life, which was the result of the repeated* 
sanguinary crises through which the empire had passed. 
The Church was not unprepared for the terrible trial 
awaiting her. Origen, in his book, " Contra Celsum," 
written in the reign of Philip the Arabian, recognises 
the fact that the respite enjoyed by the Christians could 
be but momentary, and that it would terminate as soon 
as their enemies had once more impressed on the 
popular mind, the idea that the troubles of the empire 
were due to the tolerance of the proconsuls. " I do not 
believe," he said, "that the tranquillity we are now 
enjoying will be of long duration." * Cyprian, Bishop 
of Carthage, had seen in prophetic vision the coming 
persecution. " I saw," he writes, "the father of a family, 
and by his side a young man whose countenance ex- 
pressed anxiety and grief blended with indignation ; his 
cheek was resting upon his hand. Another young man 
on the left was holding a net, which he seemed to wish 
to cast over a whole great nation. It was said to him 
whom this vision astonished, that the young man on 
the right was mourning to see his precepts violated, while 
he on the left rejoiced at having obtained from the 
father of the family permission to act with cruelty." t 
It is not needful to have recourse to a miraculous inter- 
vention in order to explain this vision ; it reproduced 
in a symbolic form the prevailing feelings of earnest 

* Origen, " Contra Celsum," III. cxv. (Vol. I. p. 456.) 
f " Dictum est ei juvenem qui ad dextram sic sederet, con- 
tristari et dolere quod praecepta sua non observarentur ; ilium 
vero in sinistra exultare, quod sibi daretur occasio ut a patre- 
familias potestatem sumeret saeviendi." (Cyprian, " Epist." xi. 4.) 



I78 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Christians at this time. They were constrained to 
admit that the level of piety was sensibly lowered, that 
the spirit of the world had crept into the Church, with 
the multitudes whom a prolonged peace had tempted 
*to enter its ranks, and that finally the love of ease and 
of pleasure, the desire for repose and the shrinking from 
suffering, were preparing the way for numerous defec- 
tions. At Alexandria, as at Rome and at Carthage, 
eloquent voices were deploring this melancholy con- 
dition of the Church, into the causes of which we shall 
have carefully to inquire. It was especially in the great 
cities that this decline of the Christian life was obser- 
vable ; there, temptations were many, and apart from 
the seductions of pagan life, the Church, enriched and 
dignified in worldly estimation by the addition of many 
families belonging to the higher classes of society, itself 
spread more than one snare for pride and ambition. * 
Those who grieved over such a state of things were fain 
to desire the sharp discipline of persecution, and from 
day to day they expected its outbreak. A year before 
the cruel edict of Decius, persecution had burst forth at 
Alexandria in consequence of a popular tumult stirred 
up by a licentious poet, who was accustomed to gain a 
living by his pagan verses, as the silversmiths of Ephesus 
did by the sale of images of Diana. This persecution 
was not legalised and formal ; it was a sudden violent 
rising, and the Christians who perished in it were put to 
death without trial. Old men and women were basely 
murdered, after having been subjected to such frightful 
tortures as an incensed and ruthless mob can invent. 
Metras, a very aged man, and Quinta, a feeble woman, 

* See Origen, "In Joann.," Homily VII.; Cyprian, " De Lapsis," 
v. These two important passages will be carefully examined by 
us in our representation of the Christian life. 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 179 

stood firm under all threats and suffering. Quinta, 
after being taken into a pagan temple, was dragged 
through the streets of Alexandria till her body was torn 
to pieces by the sharp stones. A young girl named 
Apollonia stood steadfast in view of the stake kindled to 
consume her, and cast herself into the flames after her 
tormentors had torn out all her teeth. The crowd forcibly 
entered the houses of the Christians, carrying cruelty 
and rapine wherever they went.* Hardly was the fury 
of the Alexandrians appeased, when persecution burst 
forth afresh through the whole empire, under the decree 
of the emperor himself. This time no province was 
exempt. In the preceding persecution, the attack had 
been directed primarily against bishops ; in this, no 
distinction was recognised either of place or class. One 
threat was suspended over all heads. A veritable 
Inquisition was instituted, for the decree of Decius 
contained a terrible aggravation of that of Trajan. It no 
longer enjoined simply the condemnation to death of 
men convicted of having embraced the new religion ; it 
commanded that they should, if possible, be forced by 
tortures to recant. Such an innovation gave unlimited 
scope to the sanguinary genius of the persecutors, and 
rendered the trial of the Christians tenfold more severe. 
" The emperor," we read in the life of Gregory Thau- 
maturgus, by Gregory of Nyssa, " commanded the 
governors of the various provinces, under terrible threats 
in case of disobedience, to inflict upon the Christians all 
manner of tortures, in order to bring them back to the 
national worship of demons, by fear and by the excess 
of their agony." f We know what manner of men they 

* Eusebius, "H.E./ 5 VI. xli. 

f YlsfxirsL irpbg rovg tZ>v I9v£v Ka6i]yovp&vovg 7rp60~a.yj.1a, (pofiipav tear 
avriov ti)v aireiXi)v tyjc Tipiopiag bpl^iov, a fir) 7ravroioig altcia^olg roug to 



l8o THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

were to whom this decree was sent, and with what cruel 
eagerness it would be executed. Thus the Church 
found itself called to pass through an ordeal of excep- 
tional severity, and to endure such a persecution as 
nothing in her past history could parallel. " The times 
are come," said Origen, " of which the Lord spoke 
when he declared that the elect themselves should 
hardly be saved." He was not mistaken, for terrible 
fallings away were soon witnessed. The decree was 
immediately promulgated, and affixed in all public 
places. A day was named, after which all who had not 
sacrificed to the gods would be put to the torture. 
Terror reigned among the Christians, and many were 
seen .anticipating the utmost limit of grace allotted 
them, and performing the deed of apostasy with a 
precipitation which betrayed at once the agitation of 
their conscience and their cowardly alarm. The apos- 
tates belonged chiefly to the higher classes of society. 
" Men remembered then," says Dionysius of Alex- 
andria, " that which the Saviour had said about the 
difficulty of a rich man's entering into the kingdom of 
heaven." * Sometimes the apostasy was open, and sealed 
by a public sacrifice to the false gods ; sometimes it was 
more furtive, as though the deserter still hoped by some 
bye-way to secure the blessings of the faithful. Many 
timorous Christians did not sacrifice to the idols, but 
asked and obtained of the magistrates a certificate of 
their idolatry, or simply the inscription of their name 
in the list of the recusants, which sufficed to place them 
in safety.t 

ovo/xa rov xp l<rr °v TrpoffKWOvvTag dia\ix)f5r)aaiVTO kcli 7rpo<Ta.yayouv TraXiv 
auiovg ipofiqj ts Kai ry ro)V aitciapaJv avayicy ry tu>v daifiovujv \arpdq,. 
(Greg. Nyssensis in "Vita Gregor. Thaumat.," Vol. III. p. 567 ; 
Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. 1.) * Eusebius, "H. E.,» VI. xli. 

f Hence the distinction into thiirificati and libellatici, of which 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. l8l 

Thus arose the very grave question of the re-admis- 
sion into the Church of those who in time of temptation 
had fallen away; we shall see, as we proceed, how deeply 
this question agitated the Church. It was the occasion 
of the important Councils of Carthage, of Rome, and of 
Africa (a.d. 251), in which the influence of Cyprian so 
powerfully asserted itself.* He wept bitter tears over 
these lamentable defections, and in his judgment on 
them, carefully avoided the two extremes of too great 
severity and culpable laxity. He wrote to the people of 
Carthage: "If one member suffers, all the members 
suffer with him. I suffer, I groan over our brethren 
who have fallen and yielded to the assaults of per- 
secution. They have torn our very bowels, and we 
bleed from their wounds. "t If the decree of Decius 
had encountered only such coward spirits, it would 
have attained its end, and Christianity would have 
been extirpated in the empire. But the old heroism 
was again manifested, as in the noblest days of the first 
two centuries. 

There were some Christians who showed themselves 
ready to forsake all for Jesus Christ, and condemned 
themselves to voluntary exile. Some bishops, like 
Cyprian and Dionysius of Alexandria, were their example 
in this. Others in great numbers were cast into gloomy 
dungeons, where they endured every kind of privation. 
The magistrates, scrupulously docile in carrying out the 



we have already spoken. (Cyprian, " Epist." xl.) Those who got 
their names inscribed on the apostate list were designated as 
Acta Facientes. (Cyprian, " Epist." xxxi.) 

* A full account of all this will be given in that portion of our 
book which will treat of the ecclesiastical organisation of the early 
centuries. 

f " Partem nostrorum viscerum secum trahentes, parem dolorem 
nobis suis vulneribus intulerunt." (Cyprian, " Epist." xvii. 1.) 



l82 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

commands of the emperor, tried by a thousand tortures 
to overcome their resistance, but in vain. "You have 
endured," wrote Cyprian to the confessors of Carthage, 
"steadfast unto the end, under the most terrible trials. 
You have succumbed under no tortures, but tortures 
have been made to succumb under your constancy."* 
If we are constrained to admit that there was a certain 
tendency to pride manifest at this time among the mar- 
tyrs, which led them more than once to abuse their 
influence and to trouble the Church, it is nevertheless 
due to them to own, that they saved the Church's honour 
by rallying a select company of faithful souls around 
the blood-stained banner, which so many apostates had 
deserted. The sufferings endured by them appear to 
have been terrible indeed. Cyprian speaks of their 
limbs being broken and torn again and again by claws 
of iron.t Nothing but death came to the relief of the 
sufferers. Sometimes an attempt would be made to 
seduce into sensuality and sin, those who could not be 
subdued by tortures or the threat of death. St. Jerome 
relates that one young man was taken to the abode of 
a harlot, where every snare of the senses was spread 
before him. He resisted the enticements of sinful 
pleasure as courageously as he had borne the inflic- 
tion of suffering, and came out unscathed from this 
fiery ordeal. J 

As we have already said, this persecution extended 
over the whole empire, from east to west. At Rome one 
of the first victims was the Bishop Fabianus, who had been 
raised to the episcopal dignity by a sudden inspiration 

* " Nee cessistis suppliciis, sed vobis potius supplicia cesserunt." 
(Cyprian, " Epist." x. 2.) 

I •' Steterunt torti torquentibus fortiores quaravis torquerentur 
jam non membra sed vulnera." (Ibid.) 

I Hieronymus, "Vita Pauli." 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 183 

of the people.* After him no immediate successor was 
appointed, for fear of exasperating the persecutors. 
"An uncertain rumour/' wrote Cyprian to the clergy of 
Rome, " had reached me of the death of this excellent 
man, my colleague; I scarcely knew whether to believe 
it or not. Your letters have fully assured me of his 
glorious end. I rejoice in the illustrious testimony you 
bear to his memory. You have for the one part desired 
to let us know how precious to you is the memory of 
your bishop, and for the other part to communicate to 
us the example of faith and courage thus set before us. 
For just as there is reason to fear that the defection of 
a bishop may lead away others after him, so is the 
steadfastness and faith of a bishop a useful and salutary 
example to the flock. "t In the East, the Bishops 
Alexander of Jerusalem and Babylas of Antioch died 
in prison; the former probably sank under the tortures 
inflicted on him, % the latter was beheaded. Six young 
persons, his catechumens, had been sentenced with 
Babylas. After seeing them perish before his eyes, he 
laid down his own venerable head upon the block before 
the executioner, saying: "Here am I, O God, and the 
children whom Thou hast given me! " His chains were 
buried with him by his own desire, "to sho'w," said 
Chrysostom, " that that which the world despises is the 
glory of the Christian." Thus he willingly laid down 
his life, rather than quit the post in the battle-field 
where his Master had placed him.§ 

* Eusebius, "H. E.," VI. xxi. 

f " In tantum contra utile et salutare, cum se episcopus per firma- 
mentum fidei fratribus prsebet imitandum." (Cyprian, "Epist." ix. 1 ) 

I Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xxxix. 

^ The acts of this martyr may be read in Ruinart. There is an 
evident basis of truth in the narrative, overlaid as it is with 
subsequent alterations. (See " Die Heldenzeiten des Thriven- 
thums." bv Kretzler, p. 241.) 



184 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Persecution was no less severe at Ephesus ; the 
legend of the Seven Sleepers bears clear traces of the 
terror which constrained the Christians of that region 
to seek concealment in the very bowels of the earth. 
At Smyrna, the martyrdom of St. Pionius and his com- 
panions wiped away a great reproach from the Church. 
Eudemon, the Bishop of the Church in that city, had 
openly apostatised. Pionius was celebrating the Eucha- 
ristic repast with a few Christians, when he was 
surprised by an excited mob, and dragged into the pubHc 
square. His replies to the questions put to him were 
calm and steadfast. When asked if life was not sweet 
to him — a very natural question under the beautiful 
sky of Asia Minor, and in the enchanting district of 
ancient Ionia — he replied that it would be sweet to him 
to breathe the air and to behold the light of the land 
to which his heart aspired. The most bitter cup he 
was made to drink was to be present at the apostasy of 
his bishop, and to hear the lips, which had so often 
uttered the words of divine truth, now deny the Lord 
Christ. This spectacle, so far from shaking the 
constancy of Pionius, inflamed him with a holy 
jealousy, and neither the exceptional severities of his 
imprisonment, nor the sufferings of the stake, could 
wring from him anything but a fearless confession of 
Christ and Him crucified. 

At Alexandria and at Carthage the persecution 
reached its height. Dionysius and Cyprian have left us 
a vivid picture of it. The consternation was great in 
the first of these cities when the decree of Decius 
was read, and when the soldiers were seen scouring 
the streets and the surrounding country that they 
might lay hands on the bishop. All who could flee, 
abandoned home and country. Many of the fugitives 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 185 

died of hunger, thirst, and cold, upon the mountains and 
in the deserts; others were slain by robbers or by wild 
beasts.* Defections were many. The fury of the people 
fell with all the more intensity upon those Christians 
who stood firm as "the pillars of the Church." Tortures — 
strange, ridiculous, and sanguinary — were heaped upon 
them. Some of the prisoners were in derision mounted 
upon mules and scourged through the town before being 
led to the stake. The tenderest youth was not spared, 
children only fifteen years old were tortured and put to 
death. More than once faithful confessors came forth 
from the ranks of the executioners. A very touching 
scene took place at the examination of one of the Chris- 
tians of the city. He was almost ready to fail and yield 
as the last agony drew near, when some of the soldiers 
of the proconsular guard made a sign to him to stand 
fast. . . . They were themselves at once involved 
in the same condemnation, and went triumphantly to 
death. t 

At Carthage the persecution, which had been at first 
moderate, owing to the absence of the proconsul, 
became ruthless on his return. The same scenes ensued 
which we have described at Alexandria. Numerous 
apostasies, the precipitate flight of all who could quit 
the city, the prolonged and diversified tortures of the 
confessors and their bloody death, — such were the effects 
of the fresh outburst of the storm. Imprisonment was 
accompanied with unwonted rigours : the feet were 
made fast with iron fetters, the body bound with 
chains, and the captives endured all the agonies of 

* Tt oa Xsysiv rb 7r\rj9og ro.v Iv Iprip'iaiQ opeiri TrKavrfikv-iuv^ vtto Xi./xov 

KCll Si\l/t]Q KCll KpvOVQ KCU VO(7(VV KCll \t](JTU>V, KOI Qt]p'nx)V dl£(p9app.£vU>V. 

(Letter of Dionysius of Alexandria, Eusebius, "H. E\," VI'. xlii.) 
f Ibid., xli. 

13 



l86 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

hunger and thirst. * Here, also, much noble heroism 
was displayed. Cyprian had conferred the sacerdotal 
office on a Christian named Numidicus, who, after 
giving an earnest exhortation from the place of execu- 
tion to his fellow-martyrs, among whom was his own 
wife, was left for dead with the rest of the corpses. t 
His daughter, who went to seek his body to bury it, 
found him still living, and under her tender care he 
was restored. Cyprian celebrated the courage of the 
martyrs in terms as eloquent as Tertullian, but in a 
less abrupt and telling form. With the wise counsels 
which he gave to the confessors, he blended exalted 
eulogiums, which had a tendency to make the martyrs 
regard themselves as exceptions to all common rules, 
and as raised above the ordinary discipline of the Church, 
so that they began to fancy they held in their bleeding 
hands the keys of pardon. He is never weary of ex- 
tolling their courage. He describes them* as rising 
higher and higher in glory the more slow and protracted 
are their sufferings. ''With what words shall I sound 
your praises," he exclaims, "O heroic brethren! The 
crowd of witnesses have beheld with admiration your 
spiritual conflict for the Lord; they have heard you, His 
servants, confess His name openly before men, with in- 
corruptible faith and divine courage; they have beheld 
you unarmed against the darts of the world, but covered 
all the while with the shield of faith. The blood, which 
was to quench the thirst of the persecutors, flowed in 
floods, — glorious blood extinguishing the flames of 
Gehenna. O what a spectacle for God Himself! How 

* " Caro famis ac sitis diuturnitate contabuit," says Cyprian, of 
Celerius, whom he desired to raise to the office of reader. 

f " Qui uxorem adherentem latere suo concrematam laetus 
adspexTt. Ipse semiustulatus et lapidibus obrutus et pro mortuus 
derelictus." (Cyprian, " Epist." xl.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 187 

sublime, how grand! With what joy has not Christ 
fought and conquered in those who are His! He gives 
to them ail that which He seems to take from them.* 
He is present in the conflict, supporting, strengthening, 
animating the champions of His name. He who for 
us overcame death, ceases not to triumph over it in us.t 
Happy is our Church, illumined with so divine a 
glory, and ennobled in our day by the blood of the 
martyrs ! She was before white with the purity of her 
children, now she has found a royal robe of purple in 
their blood. "J Such language shows us that Cyprian 
was himself carried away by the current he tries to stem. 
We shall see how martyrdom, though it originated 
in the refusal to sacrifice to idols, gradually introduced 
into the Church, through the undue exaltation of the 
confessors, a new idolatry, full of peril to true doctrine 
and right discipline. 

Deems fell in a great battle with the invading Goths. 
Gallus (251-263), one of the chiefs of the army, succeeded 
him, and hastened to purchase an ignominious peace 
from the barbarians. His reign, inaugurated by so un- 
worthy an act, was marked by frequent invasions, in 
addition to which the empire suffered from decimating 
epidemics. Once more arose the cry, " The Christians 
to the lions ! " The flames that had scarcely yet ceased 
to smoulder were rekindled, especially in the large 
towns. Once more the Church was made to answer for 
all the woes with which the world was visited, and this 

* " Dans credentibus quantum se credit capere qui sumit.'' 
(Cyprian, " Epist." x. 3.) 

t " Et qui pro nobis mortem semet vicit, semper vincit in 
nobis." (Ibid.) 

X " Erat ante in operibus fratrum Candida, nunc facta est in 
martyrum cruore purpurea." (Ibid., x. 6.) 



155 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

accusation was none the less dangerous because it was 
now two centuries old.* 

The emperor, in order doubtless to divert from himself 
the public indignation, which he was conscious he had 
but too well merited, decreed a fresh persecution in the 
year 252. t The Christians now reaped the fruits of 
their late discipline; their faith, purified in the burning 
crucible, and strengthened by the sufferings of the 
preceding reign, failed not. We read no more in the 
writings of the time of sorrowful defections, such as 
stained the persecution under Decius. " How many 
Christians who had fallen," writes Cyprian, "have been 
raised again by a glorious confession ! They have stood 
firm, exhibiting such strength from the depth of their 
repentance, that it was evident they had been surprised 
into their former weakness, and had only quailed through 
the strangeness of persecution. Having now returned 
to the true faith, and gathered up their strength, they 
are ready, in the name of God, to endure all suffering 
with constancy and courage. They have no longer to 
seek pardon for a fault, but may reach forth unto the 
crown of martyrdom. "J The Church of Rome appears 
to have been the first to suffer. Two of its bishops 
perished in this persecution : these were Cornelius and 
Lucius. The mode of Cornelius' death is not known ; 
Lucius was beheaded. We possess a letter from the 
Bishop of Carthage, who nobly congratulates Cornelius 
on his fidelity. " I cannot express to thee," wrote 
Cyprian to him, "my rapture and joy when I received 

* " Dixisti per nos fieri et quod nobis debeant imputari omnia 
ista, quibus nunc mundus quatitur et urgetur, quod dii vestri a 
nobis non colantur." (Cyprian, " Ad Demetr.," iii.) 

t Eusebius, "H. E.," VII. i. 

I "Ouot illic lapsi gloriosa confessione sunt restituti." (Cyprian, 
" Epist? ix. 2.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. 189 

the good tidings of thy constancy. Thou hast taken thy 
place at the head of the band of confessors, and the 
courage of the bishop has been upheld by the courage 
of those who trod in his footsteps. Thyself leading the 
way to glory, thou hast turned the feet of many into the 
same path ; thou hast persuaded thy whole flock as one 
man to confess the truth,* because thou wast thyself 
ready to confess the Master in the name of all. The 
adversary thought to scatter the camp of Christ in con- 
fusion by his sudden assault, but he has met with a zeal 
in the defence equal to his own in the attack. "t Cyprian, 
writing to Lucius, the successor of Cornelius, who with 
a number of the Roman Christians had just passed 
through the furnace without being consumed, expresses, 
in the most touching manner, the joy which must be felt 
in beholding again such noble confessors, who, like 
the three young Hebrews in Babylon, J had been 
miraculously delivered from the power of death : " Would 
to God that I could be present at your return into the 
Church! What must be the delight of the brethren! 
What their warm welcome and eager embraces ! But 
scarcely can even such embraces, or the beaming eyes 
and sunny faces of the flock, express the deep joy they 
feel in looking on you once again ! It is a feast of which 
they are never weary. Brethren, you can faintly fore- 
shadow what will be the joy when Christ Himself 
returns. That return is near, and you are enjoying its 
image and foretaste; for it seems as if the Lord Himself 
were come again with this noble confessor, His bishop 
and His priest."§ This joy was, alas! of short duration, 

* "Confessorem populum suaseris esse." (Cyprian, "Epist."''lx. 1.) 
t "Ouo impetu venerat, eodem impetu pulsus et victus est." 

(Ibid.,lx. 2.) _ X Ibid., lxi. 1. 

§ " Quae illic exsultatio omnium fratrum, qui concursus atque 

complexus occurrentium singulorurn." (Ibid., lxi. 3.) 



190 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

for Lucius was soon again seized, and this time his life 
was the sacrifice. 

Persecution was sure to fall heavily upon the Chris- 
tians of Carthage, since the pestilence, which had so 
exasperated the populace against them, had been most 
virulent in that city. Cyprian has left us ^ pathetic 
picture of this fearful epidemic, which everywhere carried 
terror and death in its track. The malady attacked the 
whole body at once; the sufferer wasted away, his throat 
burned as with a hidden fire, his eyes grew dim and 
bloodshot, and a gnawing agony consumed his vitals.* 
There was scarcely a house exempt. Cyprian had a 
double duty to fulfil: he had first to silence the calum- 
nies of the pagans, who accused the Christians of being 
the authors of their woes; then to reassure the Chris- 
tians themselves, whom this fearful scourge terrified 
beyond measure. He nobly acquitted himself of his 
arduous task. He wrote for the pagans the letter to 
Demetrius, one of the agitators for the persecution and 
one of the most bitter slanderers of the Church. To his 
flock he addressed his treatise "On Mortality." 

The eloquent Bishop did not disguise from himself 
the difficulty of bringing to reason a pagan people, whose 
passions were excited. "As well," he said, "try to 
calm with a word, the sea seething in the tempest. "t 
Nevertheless, he felt it incumbent on him seriously to 
refute calumnies, which were equally baseless and ab- 
surd. He expresses, first of all, an idea which might 
readily arise in the age of social disorganisation in 
which he lived. It seems to him that the world has 



* "In fauciura vulnera conceptus medullitus ignis exa?stuat, 
oculi vi sanguinis inardescunt." (Cyprian, "De Mortalitate," xiv.) 

-f- " Turbulenti maris concitos fluctus clamoribus retundere.* 
(Cyprian, "Ad Demetr.," iii.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. igi 

grown old,* that, in a world weary of life-bearing, death 
alone germinates readily. Looking on that vast empire, 
a prey to its own internal decay and to the rapacious 
quarrels of its rulers, he instinctively feels the end of 
the world must be at hand. He could not know that 
those barbarians, who were in his eyes the heralds of 
general ruin, were in truth to be the renovators of the 
world, and to open to humanity a career of renewed 
youth and fresh development. Cyprian has also 
other and stronger arguments to use against his 
adversaries. It is not the pretended impiety of the 
Christians, it is the crimes of the pagans which have 
irritated Heaven. "These calamities," he says, "come 
not because we do not worship your gods, but because 
you do not worship ours."t He quotes, in support of 
this assertion, the most terrible denunciations of idolatry 
contained in the Scriptures. " God is angry, and 
menaces and visits you, because you do not come back 
to Him. And in your blind obstinacy and disregard of 
Him, you marvel and complain that the heavens give 
no rain, that the earth is consumed with drought, that 
the barren soil brings forth only a thin and withered 
herbage, that the hail smites the vines and the wind 
strips the olive-trees, that a mortal poison is abroad in 
the air, when all these judgments are provoked by your 
sins, X and when the anger of God waxes hotter and 
hotter, so long as you continue in them." Cyprian 
then gives a picture of the crimes of the pagans, for 
which strong colours were ready to his hand. "You 
complain of the enemies without ; what are they in 

* "Senuisse jam mundum." (Cyprian, "Ad Demetr./' iii.) 

f " Non enim ista accedunt, quod dii vestri a nobis non coluntur, 

sed quod a vobis non colatur Deus." (Ibid., v.) 

I " Cum omnia ista, provocantibus peccatis vestris, veniunt." 

(Ibid., vii.) 



ig2 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

comparison with the enemies within, with those of our 
fellow-citizens who are powerful only for evil ? You 
complain of famine, as if rapacity did not bring more 
want upon our cities than the drought brings.* You 
complain of the pestilence, but you add to its horrors 
by your inhumanity, abandoning the poor sufferers, and 
allowing their bodies to lie unburied." All these crimes 
culminate in the treatment to which the Christians are 
subjected. "Not content with not worshipping God 
yourselves, you sacrilegiously persecute those who do 
worship Him. Full of complaisance for the devotees 
of what I may call not only senseless idols but mon- 
sters, you lay a ban only upon the followers of the true 
God. These innocent men, dear to their God and 
honourable among yourselves, you banish ; you confis- 
cate their goods, you load them, with fetters, you cast 
them into dungeons, you behead them, you throw them 
to the wild beasts, or give their bodies to be burnt. 
Nay, more, each day a subtle cruelty devises some new 
mode of torture. t Do you marvel that God should 
avenge His own ?t He makes them, for their profit, 
partakers in the common affliction which comes upon 
all men, but to you these scourges declare the terrible 
judgment of God upon your crimes." The treatise 
concludes with an eloquent appeal, addressed to the 
conscience of the pagans, which follows on a description, 
written in letters of fire, of the pains of the future life. 
"To hate is forbidden us," said Cyprian; "we please 
God by not avenging ourselves ; therefore we summon 
you to obey God, and to rise from your deep darkness 

* " Quasi famem majorem siccitas quam rapacitas faciat." 

(Cyprian, "Ad Demetr.," v.) 

f " Excogibat novas paenas ingeniosa crudelitas." (Ibid., xii ".) 
{ " Quod inultum non remaneat quodcunque perpatimur." 

(Ibid., xvii.) 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. I93 

into the pure light of true religion. We render you 
love for hatred, and our only vengeance for the tortures 
which you lay upon us is to show unto you the way of 
salvation. Believe and live."* 

Cyprian was "not less earnest in his endeavours to 
rally the failing courage of the Christians of Carthage. 
" I observe," he says, in his treatise on " Mortality," 
" that some among you, through feebleness of soul or 
poverty of faith, through a cowardly clinging to the 
present life or through the natural weakness of your 
sex, or, which is a more serious peril, through erroneous 
views, faint in the day of trial. "t He seeks to forewarn 
these timid Christians against the fear of death, by 
pointing out to them all the temptations and sufferings, 
with which we are surrounded in this world of sin. 
" Our joy will be to see the Lord Christ. What blind- 
ness and folly to choose, rather than that beatific vision, 
the tribulations, pains and sorrows of the world. This 
comes, beloved brethren, from our want of faith. "J 
Cyprian then enumerates from Scripture the benefits of 
trial. " Why fear a death which is a deliverance from 
the present age ? Do not imagine, because the just die 
as the unjust, that their end is the same. The just are 
taken away to the abode of blessedness, the unjust to 
the place of torment. We are ungrateful, O brethren 
beloved, for the benefits bestowed upon us. Behold our 
virgins, who fall asleep in peace with their glory unde- 
filed ; they have no more to fear the violence or the 
seductions of Antichrist, who is at hand, nor can 
they be drawn into the haunts of infamy. Our children 

* " Odisse non licet nobis. Odiis vestris benevolentiam reddimus, 
et pro tormentis ac suppliciis, quae nobis inferuntur, salutis itinera 
monstramus." (Cyprian, "Ad Demetr.," xxv.) 

f "Animadverto quosdam minus stare fortiter." (Cyprian, "De 
Mortalitate," i.) J " Hoc fit quia fides deest." (Ibid., vi.) 

O 



194 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

escape the perils of the age of guilty desires, and 
lightly wear the crown of continence and innocence. 
The delicate matron has no more to fear the tortures of 
persecution ; she is delivered by swift death from the 
barbarous hands of the executioners. The present trial 
is to revive the heart of the fearful, to fortify the weak, 
to stir up the slothful, to rally the deserters, and to 
equip for the fight a new and numerous army, prepared 
to stand in the fore-front of the battle when it shall 
recommence.* Let us not murmur as though the 
epidemic snatched away the martyr's crown : those are 
not held faithless to the martyr's calling to whom the 
occasion of martyrdom never comes. t That which is 
essential, is that we do the will of God." These 
counsels produced the desired result ; the assembled 
Church listened to them from the lips of the Bishop 
himself. The effect of his discourse was irresistible, 
and the deacon Pontius, the biographer of Cyprian, 
exclaims that had the pagans been present they would 
certainly have been won to Christ. All cowardly fear 
Was banished from the hearts of the Christians ; they 
devoted themselves zealously to the tending of the sick 
and the burial of the dead. Offerings abounded, and 
the charity of the Church was extended even to the 
pagans. " Thus," adds Pontius, " did it cast into the 
shade that of Tobias, who distributed his alms only to 
the poor of his own people."^ 

Almost at the same time, the savage nations of 
Northern Africa having carried off into their deserts 
many captives, among whom were some Christians, 



* Cyprian, " De Mortalitate," xv. 

f " Aliud est martyrio animum deesse, aliud animo defuisse mar- 
tyrium." (Ibid., xvii ) 

Pontius, " Vita et Passio." Cyprian. Kretzler, " Die Helden- 
zeiten des Christenthums." 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. I95 

Cyprian made a fresh appeal to the liberality of his 
Church in his treatise " On Almsgiving." We find in 
this treatise unquestionably more than one false idea of 
the expiatory and purifying virtue of generous giving; 
but the duty of generosity is urged with passionate 
eloquence. The pious Bishop said with reason that 
Christians should dread rather to find their charity 
diminishing than their goods growing less.* There is 
more prudence in leaving God as the guardian of our 
children, than in labouring to increase their patrimony. 
Cyprian sustains this argument, which breathes the 
purest spirit of the Gospel, by drawing a striking parallel 
between the generosity of men of the world for the 
prince of this world, and the parsimony of Christians 
towards their God. He supposes the Evil One coming 
with his followers to the Church and thus addressing it : 
"I have not borne for these, my friends, shameful entreat- 
ing and scourging ; I have not been crucified nor shed my 
blood for them, nor have I promised them the kingdom 
of heaven. Yet see what precious gifts they bring me to 
adorn my feasts, whether the offering be of their goods 
or of their own selves. Hast thou, O Christ, such givers 
among Thy rich ones ? Do they bring such offerings to 
Thee, pledging or sacrificing their worldly goods, nay, 
rather exchanging them for durable riches in that Church 
which Thou dost watch and govern ? These fading, 
earthly treasures that are lavished on me, give not food, 
comfort, or clothing to any creature. Thou, on the con- 
trary, art clothed and cherished in the persons of Thy 
poor, and Thou dost promise eternal life to the charitable 
among Thy friends; and yet these, to whom is held iorth 
such a celestial recompense, come short in munificence 

* " Dum ne quid de rebus tuis minuatur attendis, non respicis 
quod ipse minuaris." (" De opere et eleemos.," x.) 



I96 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of those who are ready to perish in my train."* Such 
appeals could not be withstood, and the captives were 
ransomed. 

Gallus was murdered with his son, as he was marching 
against his competitor iEmilianus; the latter met the 
same fate, and Valerian, who was hastening from the 
Rhine to assist Gallus, was proclaimed emperor 
(a.d. 253), while his son Gallienus was associated with 
him in the empire by the senate. He at first appeared 
favourably disposed to the new religion, so that his 
palace was filled with Christians, and, Eusebius says, 
resembled a Church. t Too soon, however, there came 
a change. The emperor fell under the influence of 
Macrinus, an able man, versed in the magic of Egypt. 
Soldiers of fortune, raised to the throne by crime, were 
ever accessible to those superstitions which seemed to 
promise all the advantages of religion, while tolerating 
and favouring every vice. It was an easy mode of pro- 
curing the protection, or to speak more truly, the 
complicity, of the occult divinities, who Were esteemed 
the more powerful the less they were understood. 
Valerian decreed a new persecution under the influence 
of Macrinus. It was not at first very sanguinary. We 
see, from the account given by Dionysius of Alexandria, 
that the proconsuls contented themselves with forbidding 
meetings for worship, and sentencing the delinquents 
to exile. In proconsular Africa, the Christians were 
prohibited visiting the cemeteries, and many of them 
were compelled to work in the mines. Cyprian wrote to 
these a letter of consolation, which gives us some idea 
of their pitiable condition. They had been scourged 

* " Tuos tales munerarios, Christe, demonstra. Vix tui meis 
pereuntibus adasquantur." (" De opere et deemcs., 5 ' xxii.) 
t Eusebius, " H. E.," VII. x. 



BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. I97 

before being sent to their rude labours; they were bound 
in chains, and their feet loaded with irons. "These are 
not chains," exclaims Cyprian, "they are ornaments. 
O fettered feet of the blessed ones, treading the path to 
paradise ! You have no bed, no place of rest in the 
mines; your wearied limbs are stretched on the cold earth; 
naked, there are no clothes to cover you, hungry, no 
bread to feed you. But what a glory lights up this your 
shame, which is a token of perdition only to the 
pagans."* The persecution could not stop here ; it must 
necessarily become more bloody. The following de- 
cree was issued a.d. 258: "The bishops, priests, and 
deacons, are to be put to instant death ; the knights and 
senators to be deprived of their dignity and possessions, 
and if they still persist in their faith, to be beheaded. 
Women of condition are to be banished after confiscation 
of their goods ; and those of the house of Caesar who have 
confessed, or shall confess, the new religion, shall forfeit 
their goods, and shall be sent in chains into some distant 
province of the empire. "t Such a decree gave of course a 
great impetus to the persecution, which became uni- 
versal. Dionysius tells us ' ' that persons of every age and 
condition were scourged, or put to death by the sword, 
or burned.";}; At Csesarea three faithful confessors 
denounced themselves to the judges, and were con- 
demned. At Rome, the Bishop Sixtus was put to death 
with four deacons in the catacombs. Fructuosus in 

* " Fustibus caesi. Imposuerunt compedes pedibus vestris; non" 
favetur in metallis lecto. Vestis algentibus deest. Panis illic 
exiguus." (Cyprian, " Epist." lxxxvi. 2.) 

t " Quas autem sunt in vero ita se habent. Rescripsisse Valeri- 
anum ad senatum ut episcopi et presbyteri et diacones incontinenti 
animadvertantur. Senatores vero et egregii viri equites Romani 
dignitate amissa., etiam bonis spolientur et si, ademptis facultatibus, 
christiani esse perseverarint, capite quoque mulctentur." (Gieseler, 
ir Church History/' Vol. I., 20.) 

X Eusebius, *«H.E.,"VIL xi. 



I98 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Spain, Saturnin and Dionysius in Gaul, also fell 
victims. The Church of Carthage had again the honour 
of being exposed to the rudest blows. Cyprian addressed 
to it his "Exhortation to Martyrdom." In order to 
induce the Christians to put on joyfully this purple 
robe, dyed in the blood of the Lamb,* the Bishop 
of Carthage reminds them of the rich promises of 
Scripture to the faithful and true witnesses. He con- 
cludes'by saying : " In such meditations the spirit grows 
strong, and becomes proof against the terrors of the 
evil one and the menaces of the world. Earth 
is shut against us in times of persecution, but heaven 
is opened ; Antichrist threatens, but Christ sustains ; 
death overtakes us, but immortality follows ; the world 
recedes, but paradise receives us ; this life of a day 
is quenched, eternal life begins. What honour, what 
peace, what joy, to depart thus gloriously from the midst 
of persecution and anguish, to shut the eyes on the world 
and men, to open them on the face of God and of His 
Christ: O short and blessed voyage !"t Cyprian was soon 
to know from experience the blessedness thus so vividly 
conceived by him, of a courageous death for the truth. 

We know what was the melancholy end of Valerian, 
how after his defeat by the King of Persia he was com- 
pelled ignominiously to follow in his triumphal train. 
His son Gallienus issued the first edict of toleration to 
the Church. This edict imported that the emperor 
desired to extend his noble protection to the whole 
world, and that the bishops might claim this protection 
against all who sought to trouble them. J By another 

* " De agno lanam ipsam et purpuram misi." (" De Exhort. 
Martyr.," iii.i 

f " Quanta est dignitas et quanta securitas exire hinc lsetum. . . 
Turn feliciter migrandi O quanta velocitas ! " (Ibid., xiii.) 

t Eusebius, "H. E.," VII. xiii. 






BOOK I. — THE CHURCH OF THE EMPIRE. I99 

decree, he gave the Christians permission to visit their 
cemeteries. During the anarchy which characterised 
the period intervening between Gallienus and Aurelian, 
and which is justly known in history as the period of 
the thirty tyrants, the Church enjoyed complete repose. 
The competitors who contended for the empire had 
enough to do in opposing each other, and did not 
trouble themselves about the Church. This security 
lasted throughout the reign of Aurelian. That emperor 
was compelled at first to devote all his energies to the 
conflict with the barbarians ; then he required his whole 
forces to overthrow the brilliant but ephemeral kingdom 
of Palmyra, rendered illustrious by the genius and 
valour of a woman. We find a striking proof of the 
security of the Christians during this period in the 
sumptuous life of a worldly and heretical bishop, who 
reigned like a veritable prince within his church. We 
shall presently see the ground of the sentence of con- 
demnation passed upon Paul of Samosata in the 
Council of Antioch (269). Some bishops committed 
the error of calling in the intervention of Aurelian in a 
purely religious question, and the emperor, with rare 
wisdom, declared himself incompetent to interfere. 
When he died he was on the eve of departing from his 
principles of tolerance towards the Christians ; indeed 
he had already issued a decree* against them, which his 
premature death rendered nugatory. Himself an ardent 
devotee ot the oriental divinities, he only wanted leisure 
to become a Decius or Valerian towards the Christians. t 
His successors, until Dioclesian, left the Church in 
peace, but persecution was to break forth with only the 
greater vehemence for being so long repressed. 

* Lactantius," De Morte Persecutorum," vi. 
t Aurelian had reared at Rome a temple to the sun. 
(Vopiscus, xxv.) 



200 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

§ III. The Last General Persecution. 

Dioclesian was raised from the lowest rank to the 
supreme power (a.d. 284). He was more than a mere 
soldier favoured by fortune ; he had the genius of a 
profound politician. He was fully conscious that the 
great peril threatening the empire was from the barbar- 
ous nations, whose hosts were already beating like great 
waves against its boundaries both in East and West, 
and which had already more than once effected wide 
breaches in those boundaries ; he was determined there- 
fore to bring all his force to bear upon their repression. 
One man alone was not sufficient for such a task. To 
put able generals at the head of armies which were 
to fight far away from the emperor, was to create so 
many usurpers, to foster civil war, and to turn against 
the empire the very forces designed for its defence. 
Dioclesian could devise but one method of averting this 
danger, namely, to give the purple at once to those 
who would otherwise infallibly seize it for themselves, 
and to share a power which there was no possibility of 
preserving intact, except at the cost of constant san- 
guinary struggles. Four emperors were thus raised at 
once to the throne — Dioclesian and Maximian with the 
title of Augustus, Galerius and Constantius under the 
name of Caesar. Maximian was an old comrade in arms 
of Dioclesian, and belonged to an obscure family in 
Pannonia. Galerius and Constantius were men utterly 
unlike. The former had all the vices and all the 
passions of paganism, joined with much natural im- 
petuosity and courage ; the latter united to the skill 
of a consummate general, a moderate, tolerant, and 
elevated spirit, in which there was manifest much of 
the generous influence of the new religion, though he 



BOOK I. — THE LAST GENERAL PERSECUTION. 201 

had not positively embraced it. Dioclesian governed 
in the East ; Maximian reigned over Italy, Africa, and 
the Islands ; Galerius over Thrace and the Danubian 
provinces ; and Constantius over Gaul, Spain, and 
Britain. 

The end which Dioclesian proposed to himself seemed 
attained; the invaders were everywhere driven back, 
and no usurpers had arisen in the victorious armies. 
But if the foreign foes were vanquished, another not less 
formidable invasion was making swift though silent 
progress — the invasion of foreign thought. How could 
it be otherwise, when Dioclesian himself lent all his 
power to the patronage of new ideas ? He dealt the last 
blow to the ancient constitution of the empire by sub- 
stituting the pompous and servile forms of oriental 
monarchy, for the pseudo-republican forms of the 
monarchy of the Caesars. His despotism was not more 
oppressive than that of his predecessors, but it was more 
Asiatic* He was constantly absent from the capital 
of the empire, and showed a marked preference for 
Nicomedia. Again, without falling into the mad and 
impure follies of Heliogabalus, he patronised, like him, 
the worship of the sun, and although bearing himself 
the surname of the greatest of the Olympic gods, he 
did all in his power to ensure the predominance of the 
religions of the East.t Great as a general and as a 
statesman, Dioclesian seems to have been weak and 
superstitious in reference to religion. He was not 
cruel by nature, but he might easily become so under 
the influence of pagan fanaticism. During the early 
part of his reign, the Church continued to develop itself 

# See some most interesting reflections on this transformation in 
M. Broglie's " History," Vol. I. 

f Milman, " History of Christianity," Vol. I. p. 382. 

14 



202 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

freely. It increased day by day in numbers and in 
importance. Religious edifices were multiplied, and 
rivalled in dignity the pagan temples. At Nicomedi-a 
itself, opposite the imperial palace, a Christian 
temple rose upon a hill, a striking monument of the 
progress of the new religion, and of the tolerance of the 
late emperors. In the court of Dioclesian, Christians 
were raised to the highest offices, among others 
Dorotheus, who had won great regard by some signal 
services. The Christian officers of the palace were 
authorised to attend to their religious duties with their 
whole households, without entering into any covenant 
with idolatry, and some governors of provinces received 
a dispensation from sacrificing to the idols.* The 
wife and daughter of the emperor showed an evident 
leaning towards the Christian faith. t Everything there- 
fore seemed to promise the Church a long period 
of security, and perhaps even permanent toleration. 
There were still, indeed, here and there cases of 
suffering for the truth, but there was nothing that 
could justly be styled persecution. The reputed mas- 
sacre of the Theban legion at Saint Maurice is so 
completely legendary, that it deserves no serious 
consideration.^ 

It was to be expected, however, that the pagan party, 

* Olc teat rag tCjv iQv IvcX^p'^ov jjyifiovlag, rrjg 7refjl to Ovuv 
aywviag avTovg a7ra\\aTTov- fr . (Eusebius, " H. E./' VIII. i.) 

f Lactantius, " De Morte Persecutorum," x. 

I Apart from the improbability of there being a whole legion 
composed of Christians, and of Christians of equal heroism, the 
silence of such historians as Eusebius, Sulpicius Severus, and 
Paul Arosius, is significant. The first mention of the story is in the 
Acts of St. Romanus (A.D. 520) and of Avitus. There has been 
supposed to be in the legend a sort of strange confusion with the 
acts of a Greek named Maurice, who suffered martyrdom with 
seventy Christian soldiers in Syria at the same period. (Mosheim, 
" Comment.," p. 27 ; Gieseler, " Church History," Vol. I.) 



BOOK I. — THE LAST GENERAL PERSECUTION. 203 

still so powerful, would try all means to hinder the 
success of Christianity. The outward growth of the 
Church was an offence to it, the fanatic worshippers of 
the false gods trembled with rage as they passed before 
the noble temples raised to the honour of the Crucified. 
Even the secret worship celebrated in the catacombs they 
had held to be intolerable, and they had again and again 
forbidden all ingress to these Christian sanctuaries ; 
and now, should they endure the observance of these 
accursed rites in the full face of day and at a few paces 
from the imperial palace ? They glanced at their own 
ranks, and felt themselves still an imposing majority ; 
they had on their side the traditions of the past, the 
laws, and the emperors ; for they could count upon the 
support of Dioclesian, and Constantius Chlorus was too 
far away from the seat of the empire to cross their 
schemes. The pagan party was composed of philo- 
sophers like Hierocles, or like the illuminati of the 
Alexandrian school, inclining more and more to theurgy ; 
of magicians, who were either deceivers, or themselves 
deceived; of all the priests who lived by the altar; and of 
the abject mass of a corrupt people, who sought in super- 
stition an excuse for its crimes in the present life, and a 
charm against the terrors of the life to come. The recog- 
nised head of this party was Caesar Galerius, who from 
his childhood had been under the influence of a pagan 
mother, a vicious and superstitious woman, passionately 
attached to the idols, and consequently a sworn foe 
of the Christians, whose absence from the impious 
festivals over which she presided in her village, she 
could never forgive.* It is easy to imagine what would 
be the paganism of a small ignorant town of Illyria ; 

* " Erat mater ejus Dese montium cultrix. Dapibus sacrificabat 
pene quotidie. Christiani abstinebant. Hinc concepit odium 
a^versus eos." (Lactantius. " De Morte Persecutorum," xi.) 



204 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

it was the most abominable medley of all vile super- 
stitions, without any admixture of that philosophic 
breadth of spirit, which asserted its influence more or 
less in all the great cities. The son of Romula, when 
he mounted to the throne, had not abjured either the 
bigotry of his native village or the blind hatred of his 
mother to Christianity. Prepared for a life of cruelty 
by one of infamy, full of the craving for sensual indul- 
gence and the thirst for blood, which are such common 
associates, capable of every crime, Galerius was the 
hope of the pagan party, and was ready to be its passive 
instrument. He endeavoured to induce Dioclesian 
to depart from his moderate policy towards the Chris- 
tians. It was already known that he was not favourable 
to their creed, and that he regarded himself as the 
vigilant guardian of the national traditions, — a position 
strangely assumed by an emperor who had introduced 
a considerable change into the constitution of the 
empire. We find the following declaration in a decree 
issued by him against the sect of the Manicheans : 
"The immortal gods have established and determined 
by their providence that which is good and true. Many 
wise men are prepared to maintain it. There must be 
no opposition to them ; no new religion is to censure 
the old, for it is a great crime to overthrow that which 
our ancestors have established and which is the law of 
the State."* This love of that which was ancient 
might to a certain extent retard persecution, for the 
Church formed a respectable body in the State, and 
had the advantage of a tradition of no mean antiquity ; 
but it might also, under the influence of hostile sugges- 
tions, give rise to the most sanguinary reprisals upon 
the Christians. Persecution commenced first in the 

* Neander, " Church History," Vol. I. p. 197. 



BOOK I. — THE LAST GENERAL PERSECUTION. 205 

camps. We have already pointed out how closely 
military service was associated with idolatrous practices. 
If the Christians were to be allowed to lead a peaceable 
life in the armies, it was necessary that their generals 
should voluntarily shut their eyes to many infractions 
of a discipline tainted with idolatry. Let any motive of 
self-interest come in to arouse their vigilance, and per- 
secution was inevitable. It was part of Galerius' design 
to awaken everywhere suspicion of the Christians. A 
general, whose name is unknown, but who was probably 
an agent of Galerius, sought out diligently in his army 
all those who refused to sacrifice. He ignominiously 
expelled the soldiers -who would not submit to his orders, 
and some were even put to death. Galerius dared not 
as yet openly attack the great body of the Christians.* 
But it was easy to falsify facts by representing that 
which had occurred in the armies as a dangerous rebel- 
lion, and thus to move the mind of Dioclesian gradually 
to persecution. One circumstance, which reveals the 
complicity of the priests, contributed to dissipate his 
scruples. In the summer of the year 302, the emperor, 
finding himself in a city of the East, resolved, according 
to pagan custom, to consult the auguries of the gods by 
sacrifice. He was surrounded by several Christians, who 
were high dignitaries of the court. The priest; who had 
no doubt received his instructions^, repeated the sacrifice 
several times, pretending that the divinity refused to give 
a reply in the presence of his worst enemies. This 
knavish trick accomplished its end; the emperor 
"declared that all who would not sacrifice to the gods 
should be driven from his court, and he commanded 
that the sacrifice should be made compulsory in the 

* "Hdrjdk (nrav'ux)Q tovtgjv &q ttov icai Sevrepos Qavarov avriKarrjXXaTovTO. 
(Eusebius, " H. E.," VIII. iv.) 



206 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

armies.* These measures prepared the way for a general 
persecution. This was decreed in the year 303, after a 
council of the empire, held under the presidency of Diocle- 
sian in presence of Galerius. The deliberation was long 
and serious. The aged emperor, already afflicted with the 
malady, rather moral than physical, which darkened his 
later life, and ultimately constrained him to lay down 
the empire of the world as an insupportable burden, 
hesitated before giving so grave a decision. He repre- 
sented that the Church formed an important party, that 
lengthened toleration had allowed it to gain much 
ground in the empire, and that it could not now be 
washed away by rivers of blood. Galerius had the 
advantage over nim of an impetuous spirit and a stern 
resolve ; his victory was certain over his irresolute and 
half-hearted colleague. t In order to dispel all remaining 
doubts from the mind of Dioclesian, it was decided to 
consult the oracle of Apollo. This was to refer the 
decision of the matter to those who were most eager for 
persecution, and to fulfil a long-cherished desire of the 
pagan priests. The answer of the oracle was given in 
no obscure allegorical form ; it was the plain expression 
of the hatred of the priests ; and Dioclesian was at length 
convinced. J On the morning of February 23rd, a.d. 303, 
the feasf-day of the god Terminus, a centurion, followed 
by some soldiers, led J;he way to the Christian temple of 
Nicomedia. The gates were burst open, the building 
pillaged and destroyed. Thje pagan soldiery sought 

* " Mactatae hostias nihil ostendebant, tunc ira furens sacrificare; 
non eos tantum qui sacris ministrabant, sed universos qui erant in 
palatio jussit, etiam milites." (Lactantius, " De Morte Persecuto- 
rum," x.) 

f " Diu senex furori ejus repugnavit, ostendens quam perniciosum 
esset inquietari orbem terrae." (Ibid., xi.) 

I "Misit ad Apollinem Milesium. Respondit ille ut divkue 
religionis inimicus." (Ibid , x.) 



BOOK I. — THE LAST GENERAL PERSECUTION. 20y 

everywhere for the image of the proscribed god,* and 
failing to find this, they wreaked their senseless violence 
on a copy of the sacred scriptures, which they consigned 
to the flames. They were well guided by the instinct 
of hate : the Divine Word was in truth the foundation- 
stone of the Church. The next day the first decree of 
proscription was published in Nicomedia, and from 
thence speedily spread throughout the empire. Its 
purport was that " the Christian temples were to be 
razed to the ground, and the copies of the sacred books 
thrown into the fire ; that the Christians who held 
any office should be deprived, and slaves persisting 
in adherence to the proscribed faith could never be 
enfranchised. "t The Christians were further deprived 
of the right of bringing any action into court, though 
any kind of accusation might be brought against them 
without their having the opportunity of self-defence. 
The decree concluded with a threat of torture. £ There 
were still some reservations in this first edict ; no men- 
tion was made of capital punishment, but when once 
the spirit of persecution is aroused, it bursts through all 
restraints. The persecutors are inevitably drawn on to 
extremes on which they had not calculated, because 
they had left out of their reckoning one element — the 
unbending courage and heroism of conscience. This 
first decree bears clearly the impress of the pagan 
philosophers ; neither Dioclesian nor Galerius would 

* "Revulsis foribus simulacrum Dei quceritur." (Lactantius, "De 
Morte Persecutorum," xii ) 

f Tag fitv eKKXrjcriag eig iCa.(pog (pkpuv, rag de ypcupag atpavtlg irvpi 
yevicrrai, kcci tovq fikv rifj.r}g iTre.i\r}fjijikvovg, arifiovg, rovg ct sv oiKt-iaig, ti 
tTTipsvoiev iv ry rov %,otoTiaj/i(r^oi; TrpoOscret, sXevQtpi&i; arspelaQai. (Euse- 
bius, "H. E.," VIII. ii.) 

X " Edictum, quo cavebatur ut tormentis subjecti essent, adversus 
eos omnis actio caleret, ipsi non de injuria, non de rebus ablatis 
agere possent." (Lactantius, " De Morte Persecutorum," xiiij 



208 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

have themselves thought of proscribing the sacred scrip- 
tures; this was the cowardly vengeance of impotent men 
of letters, anxious to destroy the Divine book by which 
they were confounded. The edict of Dioclesian placed 
the Christians at a greater disadvantage than any 
previous decree. Against them, as Seneca said of slaves, 
everything was lawful. Even in the ordinary affairs of 
life they had to deal no longer with judges, but with bitter 
enemies, whether cloaked under the toga of the magis- 
trate, or the mantle of the philosopher. Let it be 
remembered that the religious society thus proscribed 
had become very numerous, that it had enjoyed now 
for many years a degree of toleration which had 
favoured its growth ; and we can form some idea of 
the thrill of indignation which ran through the whole 
community, when the decree was formally proclaimed 
which legalised against its members every sort of 
iniquitous proceeding, from spoliation in private life, 
to violence in the Forum and all public places. The 
Church yet numbered many humble Christians, ready, 
like their Master, to be led to the slaughter without 
opening the mouth ; but it had also in its ranks men of 
less simple piety, who knew that they formed a strong 
and powerful party, and who were disposed to defend 
their rights. To this class belonged the unknown 
Christian who, the morning after the promulgation of 
the decree, tore it down from the very walls of the 
imperial palace, and replaced it with these ironical 
words : " These are the victories over the Goths and 
the Sarmatians ! "* Carried at once to the stake, he 
bore his torture with the manly courage of a hero 
of old. We have already alluded to a notable change 
in the attitude of many of the accused at this time 

* Eusebius, "H. E..* VIII. v, 



BOOK I. — THE LAST GENERAL PERSECUTION. 20g 

towards their persecutors ; their replies, as we have them 
in the "Acts of the Marytrs," are more haughty, and 
some do not scruple to call the proconsuls tyrants. We 
feel that the Church submits as yet, but that it could 
soon assume the defensive ; there is in this the evidence 
of its growth, but also the token of a certain deteriora- 
tion of religious feeling. It is clearly less easy to the 
Christians to be resigned ; even the women show thatthey 
are under new influences, and many of them attempt to 
elude their persecutors by committing suicide. At Rome, 
a Christian Lucretia plunges the dagger into her own 
breast to escape dishonour ;* and at Antioch, a mother 
and her two daughters throw themselves into the river, 
in terror of the torture awaiting them.t Between these 
two classes — the confessors who are at once patient 
and heroic, and those who are heroic only — comes 
in the whole multitude of ordinary Christians. As in 
the previous persecution, there were many defections ; 
a large number, shrinking from open apostasy, sought 
some circuitous mode of evading death. Instead of the 
copies of the Holy Scriptures, they surrendered the 
manuscripts of some heretical books, and thus tried 
to satisfy at once their conscience and their cowardice. 
They were called traditores, and their prudence was 
judged blameworthy by an influential party in the African 
Church. Thus arose the Donatist dispute, which was 
destined to excite such stormy controversy in after 
times. 

To return, however, to the story of this terrible per- 
secution. A short time after the proclamation of the 
decree, an incendiary fire broke out on two occasions in 
Dioclesian's palace at Nicomedia. Galerius, of course, 
charged it upon the Christians ; they, with more show 
* Eusebius, " H. E.," VIII. xiv. f Ibid., xii. 



2IO THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of reason, accused him of being the author of it, since 
it was his great aim and interest to fan the flame of 
persecuting zeal, and not for an instant to allow it to 
subside.* It is remarkable that the same calumnious 
charge which gave rise to the first persecution of the 
Church, should have also been used to stimulate the 
last, and that under Dioclesian, as under Nero, the 
Christians were made the victims of a false charge 
of incendiarism. Dioclesian, rendered furious by the 
spectacle of the fire,t issued three new edicts, the pur- 
pose of which was to sweep away Christianity from the 
earth. The first enforced the imprisonment of all the 
bishops; % the second commanded that they should be 
put to the torture to constrain them to apostatise ; § the 
third, extending to Christians indiscriminately the 
measures taken at first against the bishops alone, 
ordered that in all towns and villages they should be 
compelled to sacrifice to the gods, under penalty of the 
most fearful tortures. || This last edict was, to use 
the powerful words of Constantine, written with the 
point of a poignard,^ and it gave full scope to the cruel 
genius of the torturers. So soon as these edicts were 
promulgated throughout the empire, persecution rose 
to an almost unparalleled height of fury.** The 



* " Occultis ministeriis palatio subjecit incendium." (Lactan- 
tius, " De Morte Persecutorum," xiv.) 

t " Furebat imperator." (Ibid., xv.) 

X Tovg 7rai/Taxo7i ru>v eKicXr](Tioju it poscrTioTag tlpKTcug icai dsapolg ivslpai. 
(Eusebius, "H. E.,- VIII. vi.) 

§ Tovg Karaic\ti(jrovg Bvaavrag p,tv, tav (3adi'Ceiv stt' kXtvOspiag i.vi<JTa~ 
\xkvovg ds, pivpiaig Kara^alveiv fiavavoig. (Ibid.) 

|| K.aQoXuccp TrpoGTa.yp.CLTi Travrag Travdrjpd rovg Kara 7r6Xiv Oveiv re icai 
cTTtvdeiv roTg dduXoLg eKtXsvETo. (Eusebius, " De Martyr. Palestin.," iii.) 

IT Eusebius, "Vita Constant.," ii. 5. 

** " Vexabatur ergo universa terra." (Lactantius, " De Morte 
Persecutorum," xvi.) 



BOOK I. — THE LAST GENERAL PERSECUTION. 211 

churches were pulled down, the sacred books torn to 
atoms and cast into the flames ; the prisons were rilled 
with Christians ; the vilest criminals were let loose to 
make way for them, and by day and night their limbs 
were torn and lacerated by instruments of torture. 
Blood flowed in torrents. Flight was very difficult, for 
there was scarcely a remote hamlet where a copy of the 
decree had not been affixed. All classes of society paid 
their tribute of blood to the fury of the pagans. The 
wife and daughters of Dioclesian were themselves 
compelled to sacrifice to the false gods,* a sufficient 
indication that no power in high places would avail to 
shield those Christians who remained firm and faithful. 
The first victims were chosen from the emperor's own 
suite, from among his officers, and their high rank only 
fired the rage of their executioners, who inflicted on 
them the most horrible tortures. One young man of 
the emperor's staff, named Peter, was slowly burnt 
upon a gridiron, after being torn almost limb from limb. 
Dorotheus, who had been honoured with all the confi- 
dence of his master, was strangled. t One little town in 
Phrygia was entirely destroyed by fire, because the 
greater part of its inhabitants had forsaken their idols. J 
In proconsular Africa, many Christians were thrown to 
the wild beasts. It seemed sometimes as if the 
heavenly calm and courage in their faces daunted for a 
moment the rage of the leopards and lions. § Some 
were quartered or burnt, others cast into the sea or 
torn in pieces with instruments of iron, and some died of 
famine in the prisons. The persecution extended even 
to the deserts or the Thebaid. We learn from the evi- 

* Lactantius, "De Morte Persecutorum ' xv. 

t Eusebius, " H. E.," VIII. vi. 

% " 0\t]v %pi<7Tiavu)v TToKiy^vriv. ibid., ii.) § Ibid., ViL 



212 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dence of Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis, that at Alex- 
andria the magistrates abandoned the condemned to 
the fury of the populace, who tormented them in cruel 
sport.* A number of bishops perished, among others 
Peter of Alexandria. Felix, Bishop of Tabora, in 
Africa, withstood all efforts to make him surrender his 
copy of the Holy Scriptures. " Here is my body," he 
said, " take it and burn it ; but I will not deliver up to 
men the book which contains the acts and words of my 
Saviour." t The narrative of Eusebius, who resided at 
Caesarea, shows how bloody was this persecution, for 
there is no reason to suppose that Palestine was treated 
with exceptional severity. The Churches of Italy were 
exposed to terrible sufferings. The martyrdom of St. 
Sebastian and of St. Agnes took place at this period. 
Gaul alone was exempt, thanks to the moderation and 
tolerant spirit of Constantius Chlorus, who gave only 
a formal compliance with the edict of Dioclesian. He 
destroyed the religious edifices, but suffered no violence 
to be done to the persons of any. J 

It is not our task to trace in detail the great political 
and religious revolution, which put an end to this perse- 
cution, and in a general manner to all persecution, of 
the Christians. To do this would be to enter upon the 
history of the fourth century. It is well known that 
after the voluntary retirement of the two Augusti — 
Dioclesian and Maximian Herculius — two new emperors 
ascended the throne. These were Maximinus Daza, 
who reigned in Syria and Egypt, and Severus in Africa 
and Italy, concurrently with Galerius and Constantius 
Chlorus. Constantius was soon succeeded by his son 

* Eusebius, "H. E.," VIII. x. 
t Ruinart, " Acta Martyr." 

J " Dei templum quod est in hominibus incolume servavit." 
(Lactantius, " De Morte Persecutorum," xix ) 



BOOK I. — THE LAST GENERAL PERSECUTION. 213 

Constantine. In order to reach his dying father, Con- 
stantine was obliged to deceive Galerius, in whose 
court he was a hostage. He started the day before 
that fixed for his departure, and rendered pursuit im- 
possible by killing all the imperial relays of horses on 
his road. For one moment there were six competitors 
for the empire, for the old Maximums Herculius — who 
had not the same passion for gardening as Dioclesian — 
had joined himself to his son Maxentius in an attempt 
to gain possession of Rome, and had been successful. 
Severus, vanquished and killed by him, was succeeded 
by Licinius. During the sanguinary conflicts provoked 
by these ambitious rivals, the Christians had respite. 
Persecuted for a time by Maximinus Daza, who was 
leagued with Galerius, they soon obtained peace 
throughout the East. Their most determined enemy — 
tortured with the same fearful disease that had destroyed 
Herod Agrippa, in despair over the loss of Italy, wrested 
from him by Maxentius, and with his resources com- 
pletely exhausted — turned to the God of the Galileans. 
The edict of toleration issued by Galerius is one of the 
most amazing monuments of history. In it he declared 
that he had vainly endeavoured to bring back the 
Christians to the religion of the empire ; that it was to 
be feared many of them, if they abandoned their own 
worship, would not embrace any other; and that con- 
sequently the emperor, in his clemency, conceded to 
them the right to assemble together, and only asked 
of them that they should pray to their God for his res- 
toration to health.* 

* " Contemplatione mittissimse nostras clcmentne, intuentes, el 
consuetudinem sempiternam qua solemus cunctis hominibus 
veniam indulgere promptissimam in his quociue indnlgentiam 
nostram credidimus porrigendam, ut denuo sint christiani, et 
conventicula sua componant ita ut ne quid contra disciplinam 



214 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Christianity thus took its place among the recognised 
religions of the empire. It received that which for 
three centuries it had been vainly demanding — a legal 
status, and it won this concession from the fiercest 
of its foes. It was a signal triumph. Would to God 
that the proscribed religion had rested content with the 
right to subsist unmolested, and to develop itself freely 
in the empire, and had never ambitiously sought and 
attained to a material kingdom, since for the Church 
thus to reign is to be in subservience to an all-powerful 
protector ! It is well known that the young and 
brilliant Constantine, son of Constantius Chlorus, if he 
did not actually become a Christian, at least espoused 
ardently the cause of the new religion, and destroyed 
the pagan party at the Pons Milvius by his victory over 
Maximius, after forcing his father-in-law, Maximian 
Herculius, to put an end to his own life, as the chastise- 
ment for his repeated conspiracies. Maximinus had 
for some time persecuted the Church at Rome, and he 
would doubtless have sought support in the pagan 
party had he been victorious. In his person, however, 
that party received its final defeat. The edict of Milan 
(a.d. 313) apprised the world that a new era had begun. 
Unhappily the Church also entered on an altogether 
new career — that of patronage and state protection.* 
That which it was about to gain in material power, it 
would lose in moral force and independence. The 
victory of Constantine over Licinius, which had freed 
him from Maximinus Daza, the ally of Maximius, gave 

agant. . . Unde juxta hanc indulgentiam nostram, debebunt 
Deum suura orare pro salute nostra, lit undequoversum respub- 
lica perstet incolumis, et secure vivere in sedibus suis possent." 
(Lactantius, " De Morte Persecutorum," xlviii. ; Eusebius, "H. E.," 
VIII. xvii.) 

* Lactantius, " De Morte Persecutorum," xlviii. 



BOOK I. — THE LAST GENERAL PERSECUTION. 215 

him the empire of the world, and he was able to raise 
to the throne the religion so long proscribed. 

We must pause, however, on the threshold of these 
new times, which do not come within the scope of 
our present work.* 

If we cast a retrospective glance over this long and 
bloody struggle, we shall perceive that there were only 
eight distinct great persecutions. 

The first burst forth under Nero (a.d. 64); the second 
under Trajan (a.d. 110), after his correspondence with 
Pliny the younger ; the third under Marcus Aurelius 
(a.d. 177) ; the fourth under Septimus Severus (a.d. 194) ; 
the fifth under Maximinus (a.d. 238) ; the sixth under 
Decius (a.d. 249) ; the seventh under Valerian (a.d. 257) ; 
and the eight under Dioclesian (a.d. 308). Augustine 
counts ten great persecutions, t but this computation 
supposes one under Adrian, and another under Aurelian. 
We find no reason for such a calculation but the 
desire to accommodate the facts of history to an 
arbitrary typology. 

* See, on this whole revolution, M. Broglie's work, " L'Egliseet 
PEmpire Romain au Ouatrieme Siecle," Vol. I. 

f Augustine, "De~Civ. Dei," XVII. lii. Sulpicius Severus, 
" Hist. Sacrae," II. xxxiii. 



BOOK SECOND. 

THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH IN THE 
SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH IN THE SECOND 
CENTURY. 

We shall devote this portion of our work to the 
biography and characterisation of the Fathers of the 
second and third centuries. Their doctrine we shall 
consider presently ; our object now will be to bring 
their individuality into full relief. 

§ I. The Apostolic Fathers,* 

The Apostolic Fathers are to be regarded not as great 
writers, but as great historic characters. They pre- 
served the treasure of evangelical doctrine, without 
themselves fully knowing all it contained. They 
esteemed it nevertheless more highly than their own life, 

* Beside the works already quoted, we refer the reader to 
Cotelier, " Patrum qui temporib. Apost. floruerunt Opera," Editio 
Clericus, 1698. Haefele, " Patres Apostol.," Edit., $847. Dressel, 
"Patrum Apost. Opera," Leipzig, 1857. (This is the edition trom 
which we shall quote.) See also Hilgenfeld, " Die Apostolischen 
Vaster," Halle, 1857. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 217 

which they were ever ready to lay down at the call 
of duty. The Christians of this epoch were martyrs 
in the holiest of causes, and set a sacred seal on the 
claims of God by their faithfulness to the truth, and 
on the rights of man by their resistance to all religious 
tyranny. The apostolic Fathers accept the great 
principles laid down in the previous period by St. 
Paul and St. John. They never appeal to the 
ceremonial law in opposition to the law of Christian 
liberty. But since Judseo-Christianity was not so much 
a simple fact, as the embodiment of a principle and 
natural tendency of the human heart, we must not be 
surprised to meet with it again under new forms in the 
orthodox Church, at the commencement of the second 
century. The divergencies of view among these early 
Fathers do not reach positive opposition. There 
is no collision of hostile parties ; no stormy discussion 
is raised, but there are, nevertheless, very distinct 
shades of doctrine variously colouring the faith in 
Christ, which is held in common by all. On the one 
hand, we have Pauline doctrine represented by Clement 
of Rome, Ignatius and Polycarp. The teaching of 
Polycarp bears also the distinct impress of the spirit 
of St. John, whose immediate disciple he was. On the 
other hand, the idealistic symbolism of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, is carried to the verge of Gnosticism by 
the author of the Epistle known as that of Barnabas. 
Lastly, Papias and the writer oi the allegory of the 
Pastor, revive, if not the views, at least the principles, 
of Judseo-Christianity. 

We have but little reliable information about three 
of -the apostolic Fathers — Clement, Ignatius, and 
Polycarp. They are better known to us through their 
writings than through the often contradictory testimony 

15 



2l8 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of history. Clement of Rome has been confounded, 
by an error easily to be understood, with the Clement 
of Philippi whom St. Paul calls his fellow-labourer.* 
The ancient Church, knowing tl at Clement had been 
an immediate disciple of the apostles, and finding the 
same name in one of Paul's Epistles, did not hesitate 
to associate him with the missionary travels of the 
great apostle. He is not, however, once named in 
the Acts. Indeed we learn from the Epistle to the 
Philippians, that Clement of Philippi was still in 
his native city, till within a very short period before 
the persecution under Nero. Now, it is quite certain 
that Clement of Rome was in that city at the time 
of the martyrdom of the two apostles. No reliance 
can be placed on the fables of the " Clementines," 
according to which Clement, who is elsewhere con- 
founded with the consul of the senatorial family of 
the same name persecuted under Domitian, became 
the fanatic follower of St. Peter, and opponent of 
St. Paul, t 

If we adhere strictly to the evidence of history, we 
shall recognise in Clement a member of the Church of 
Rome, a pagan by birth, who was converted by the 
preaching of Paul, or by that of one of his fellow- 
labourers. According to Irenseus, he was personally 
acquainted with the apostles, and through his associa- 
tion with them, became the living echo of their 
preaching. % Clement of Alexandria goes so far as to 

* Philip, iv. 3 ; Origen, " In Johann," I. xxix. Eusebius, " H. E.," 
III. xv. All these passages are carefully reproduced in the In- 
troduction to the Epistle of Clement by Cotelier. 

t See the letter from Clement to Peter in the " Clementines," 
Ulhorn Edition. See also the epitome of it in Cotelier, I. p. 749. 

X 'O icai iojpaKojg rovg /xaicapiovg cnro^roXovg. (Irenseus, in Eusebius, 
" H. E. r " V. vi.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 2ig 

call him an apostle ; Origen speaks of him only as 
a disciple of the apostles. * Regarded by Peter and 
John as one of the Christians of Rome, most eminent 
for piety and capacity, he was raised by them to 
the bishopric, not, be it remembered, to that which 
was regarded as the episcopal dignity in the third and 
fourth centuries, but to the bishopric in its primitive 
form, which was identical with the office of elder. 
Clement shared the government of the Church with 
Linus and Anencletus, who were bishops or elders with 
him. After the death of his colleagues, he remained 
the sole elder of the apostolic epoch, and as such 
exercised a moral power of peculiar weight, t We 

* 'O a-oaroXoc KX/jju^c. (Clement of Alexander, " Stromates," IV. 
xvii ; Origen, "De Princip.," II. iii.) 

t Regarded from the stand-point of episcopal theories, it is 
impossible to harmonise the evidence of the Fathers as to 
Clement's entry upon his office. According to Tertullian, he 
seems to have been the immediate successor of St. Peter. (De 
Praescript./' xxxii.) This is also St. Jerome's statement: " Et 
Clemens vir apostolicus, qui post Petrum romanam ecclesiam 
rexit." (In Esaia, 52.) St. Augustine, on the other hand, and the 
Cl Apostolical Constitutions," speak of Linus as the successor of St. 
Peter. (St. Aug., Epist. liii., "Ad Genedosum;" " Constitute VII. 
xlvi.) Irenasus makes Anencletus follow Linus, so that Clement 
would not come till third from the apostles. ("Ad Haeres.," III. 
iii ; Eusebius, " H.E.," V. vi.) An attempt has been made to 
solve the difficulty by supposing Linus and Anencletus to have died 
before Peter, in the persecution under Nero ; but this is contrary to 
the direct testimony of Eusebius. Epiphanes suggests that Clement, 
for the sake of peace, gave place to Linus in the bishopric. 
("Hceres.," XXVII. vi.) Why has it not occurred to any of these, 
that Clement himself puts us upon the track of the true solution ? 
In his Epistle he recognises only two degrees in the Church 
hierarchy — elders or bishops, and deacons. He was then himself 
one of the bishops or elders of the Church at Rome at the same 
time with Linus and Anencletus. The manner in which he is 
spoken of in the " Pastor Hermas " altogether justifies this 
opinion: " Scribe ergo duos libellos et mittes unum Clementi 
et unum Graptae." ("Pastor Hernias/'' Visio II. 4.) See Hil- 
genfeld. " Aposto.lichen Vaster," p. 99. 



220 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

know nothing with certainty about his death. But 
he has. himself made us acquainted with the most 
important event of his life — his official intervention in 
the troubles which were anew agitating the Church 
of Corinth. His letter brings before us the principal 
features of his moral physiognomy. He wrote towards 
the end of the first, or beginning of the second century. 
We are acquainted with the occasion and aim of this 
letter. He designed to restore harmony in one of the 
most glorious Churches of the apostolic age — in that 
Church of Corinth whose dissensions Paul himself had 
once pacified, and which seems, from the description 
given of it in the commencement of the Epistle,* 
to have passed long years of calm and prosperity. 
The writer first proceeds to describe the evil he desires 
to cure — that jealous and seditious spirit which, 
nurtured among the Corinthians by their proud self- 
complacency, has deprived them both of righteousness 
and peace. Clement earnestly calls upon the schis- 
matics to repent, and to seek once more the blessings 
of the meek and lowly. t He enforces his exhortations 
by many examples drawn from sacred history, insisting 
especially on the gentleness of Christ. In the second 
part of his letter, the pious elder of the Church 
of Rome enters on an appeal based on more directly 
evangelical grounds. He reminds the Corinthians of 
the value and greatness of the Divine grace, of which 
they have been made the subjects. This grace they 
have already largely received, but there is a yet more 
plenteous manifestation oi it reserved for them, in that 
glorious resurrection which the whole world joins to 
proclaim.! Clement invites the Christians to believe 

* Clement, " Epist. ad Corinth.," i. 3. 
f Ibid., vii. 25. % Ibid., xxiii. 28. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 221 

steadfastly in the love of God, and to respond t it by a 
holy life.* In the second part of his letter he also enters 
upon the ecclesiastical question, properly so called, 
and urges the Church of Corinth to maintain within 
itself a well-regulated organisation, and to preserve it 
with the same vigilance and care, as the ancient 
people of God bestowed on the Levitical appoint- 
ments, t The epistle concludes with a eulogium on 
charity, and with fresh exhortations to humility and 
concord. 

Such is in substance the Epistle of Clement to the 
Corinthians. It is not remarkable for brilliance of 
style or power of thought. It is loosely put together, 
and the thread of the argument is often lost in 
the profusion of illustration. We feel in reading it, 
that the writer is not a man of powerful mind, nor 
has he that passionate energy which characterises his 
race. Absorbed in the idea of the necessity of har- 
mony, which is in his eyes the universal law of the 
world, he finds eloquent words in which to set forth 
its manifestations in the great scenes of nature. 
" The heavens are under the control of God, and 
submit themselves to Him day and night in peace ; 
they follow their appointed course without interruption 
or mutual disturbance. The sun and moon and the 
chorus of the stars obey His command, and move 
on harmoniously and undeviatingly in the course He 
has marked out for them." Clement thus passes in 
review the various spheres of creation, and completes 
the sublime picture with these words: "The mighty 
Creator, Lord of all creatures, has ordained that 
all things should be wrought in peace and har- 
mony, diffusing His benefits upon all, and most of 

* Clement, " Epist. ad Corinth.," xxxi. 40. t Ibid., xl. 48. 



222 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

all, loading those with His goodness who have fled 
for refuge to lay hold of His mercy in our Lord 
Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and majesty for ever 
and ever."* 

Clement's piety is not of the sombre and melancholy 
cast, which, under pretext of doing honour to grace, 
despises nature. He admires natural beauty ; he sees 
in it a divine element, and loves to meditate upon it. 
He challenges its testimony in support of trie resurrec- 
tion. " Let us observe," he says, " the resurrection 
which is daily wrought before our eyes. Day and 
night testify to it. The night passes away, the day 
rises again. Day flees, and night returns. Let us 
consider the fruits of the earth, and the seed, how 
it grows. The sower goes forth to sow his seed in 
the earth, and the seed laid in the soil, bare and 
barren grain, there dies. From this death Divine 
Providence brings forth the germs of new life ; they 
multiply and bear fruit." t That which strikes us 
in Clement is his serenity. We feel that he himself 
enjoys that deep and abiding peace, which he urges 
the Corinthians to seek. J It is impressed on every 
page he writes, while his thoughts flow on like a broad 
and quiet stream, never swelling into a full impetuous 
tide. The commandments of God are, to use his 
own expression, inscribed in the breadth and depth 
of his heart. § Hence the fulness of expression which 
he gives to them. We feel that this man has a great 
love for Jesus Christ, and calm as is his nature, 
he finds words full of loftiness and fire when this is 
his theme. "Behold," he says, "the way of our sal- 

* Tclvtcl Tcavra 6 fiiyag ci]/J.tovpybg Kai ctairoriqg ruv aTravnov iv 
ojxovoia Kai elpqvy TrpoaWa^v uvai. (Clement, "Ad Corinth.,'' XX.) 
f ldtojxev rr)v Kara Kaipbv ytvofisvqv avacTaaiv. (Ibid., xxiv) 
% Ibid., ii. § 'Em to. ttXcltt] ttjq Kapciag. (Ibid) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 223 

vation, Christ Jesus, the high priest of our sacri- 
fice, the comforter and strength of our weakness. 
Through Him we rise to sit in heavenly places. 
He unveils to us His face, glorious in holiness ; 
"by Him the eyes of our heart are opened, our barren 
and darkened understanding expands beneath His 
shining into marvellous light. God has been pleased 
to reveal to us in Him the excellent glory of His 
majesty, He being so much higher than the angels, 
as He hath by inheritance a more excellent name 
than they."* 

If in Clement we note the principal traits of the 
Roman character, we find in Ignatius altogether a 
Greek of Asia Minor. His soul burns like the sun 
in his native sky. The circumstances of his later 
life alone are known to us. It is ascertained that 
he was Bishop of Antioch, and like Clement, an imme- 
diate disciple of the apostles. Although he had in 
all probability seen and known St. John, and had not 
had any personal acquaintance with St. Paul, he is 
nevertheless clearly a disciple of Paul's school. The 
teaching of Paul has taken strong hold of his mind, and 
in his character he recalls to us the great apostle. 
Ignatius has too often been regarded as the most 
powerful champion of the episcopal system, and as 
imbued with all the prejudices of the clerical hierarchy. 
Thanks to recent discoveries, these assertions can now 
be truly weighed, and are found wanting. In fact, ac- 
cording to a Syriac manuscript, which has thrown much 
light upon this question, three only of the seven letters 
attributed to Ignatius are genuine. It is even possible 
for us to distinguish the original text from the spurious 

* Aid tovtov r) davvs-og kccI i(jKO-u)jikvri ciavoia y'mujv dvaOaWei tig to 
Bavfiaarbv avrov <p£jg. (Clement, "Ad Corinth. ," xxxvi.) 



224 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

addition.* This expurgation has restored the letters 
of Ignatius to their true character. If they still show 
a leaning towards episcopacy, it is in the measure in 
which such a manifestation was possible, at the com- 
mencement of the second century; and instead of a 
tissue of legends, we have precise details as to the 
martyrdom of the courageous bishop. t 

Pliny's letter to Trajan has shown us the great 
progress made by Christianity in Asia Minor. This 
progress had alarmed the magistrates, and called forth 
severe measures of repression ; the number of the 
accusations advanced, doubtless gave rise to the letters 
of the proconsul of Bithynia. The same causes and 
effects must have been at work in the adjoining 
provinces. The Christians were condemned for high 
treason, and the decree of Trajan, dealing with secret 
societies, was applied to them. The most illustrious 
victim of these preliminary persecutions, which pre- 
ceded the edict of a.d. no, following on the letter 
of Pliny, was the Bishop of Antioch. He would be 
doubtless one of the first to fall, since it is certain he 
was one of the most active propagators of the new faith, 
and that if the temples of the gods were deserted, it 
was in great part through his influence. Antioch had 
been at the commencement of the second century a 

* See Note B, at the end of the Volume. 

f We do not admit the authenticity of the "Acts of the Martyr 
Ignatius," even in their most modern version, for the following 
reasons : First, the " Acts " were not known to Eusebius, for he 
gives no account of the interview between Trajan and Ignatius, 
which he would certainly have done had he read the circumstantial 
details given in the " Acts." Second, they speak of a general 
persecution which did not take place under Trajan. Third, they 
contain a flagrant anachronism, for they place the martyrdom of 
St. Ignatius in the year 106, and consequently assign Trajan's 
visit to Antioch to that date. Now, that visit was not made till 
A.D, 115, on his return from his war with the Parthians. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 225 

centre of active mission work, a focus of light for 

all Asia Minor. Ignatius, accused of the crime of high 

treason, was condemned to death; his sentence ran 

that he should be carried to Rome, there to fight with 

wild beasts. This torture had a double advantage ; 

it ensured the terrible punishment of the offender, and 

it afforded to the Roman people, one of those sanguinary 

spectacles which it so dearly loved. For a long time 

all restrictions on this barbarous usage had been 

removed. The proconsul Aquilius, in the war of 

Mithridates, had sent to Rome as many as a thousand 

captives.* There had been no lack of victims under 

Nero and his successors, who had been, indeed, lavish 

purveyors for the circus. The number had diminished 

under Trajan. Thus, when the occasion presented 

itself with some show of justice, to give the Roman 

populace a spectacle all the more choice for being 

now more rare, it was eagerly turned to account. 

Ignatius was to appear as a criminal of the worst class. 

He was sent to Rome, laden with chains, and led by 

ten soldiers, whom he likens to so many leopards. 

If his journey bears no resemblance to the triumphal 

march described in his apocryphal letters, there is 

no difficulty in supposing that he might be able 

from time to time to hold communication with his 

brethren. The conduct of the Churches towards him 

is a touching proof of the love which then bound all 

Christians together. They do not, indeed, send to him 

numerous embassies, but only some delegates as their 

representatives. The Church of Ephesus- sends one 

of her bishops. Ignatius makes use of the liberty 

* Examples of sentences similar to that pronounced on 

Ignatius may be seen in the Fathers. (Justin, " Dial, cum 

Tryph.," no; " Hermas Pastor," Visio III. 2; " Epist. ad 
Diognat.," vii.) 



226 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

granted him, to address last words of exhortation to 
his companions in labour. 

In chains, and under sentence of certain death, his 
martyrdom may be said to have already begun. Every 
word he utters under such circumstances, is full of 
weight and authority. What an impression must have 
been produced on the Church by the warnings of one 
who could thus write : "And now, in my chains, I learn 
that I have nothing more to desire. I have already 
begun to fight with wild beasts ; from Syria to Rome, 
across sea and land, I was chained to ten leopards, 
whom kindness only rendered more cruel. Their 
outrages make me only the more the disciple of Him 
who was crucified ; but it is not this which justifies 
me."* Words thus written are the sad and sacred 
testimony of martyrdom. His three epistles, in their 
genuine form, are the farewells of a Christian hero. 
They have that terse conciseness which belongs to the 
language of action. It is clear they were written in 
haste, by a man who desired to put all his Christianity 
into the few words hurriedly penned, in moments when 
the vigilance of his fierce gaolers was relaxed. A strange 
fire flashes from those broken words as from fretted 
flints. 

The first letter of Ignatius, written to Polycarp, the 
young Bishop of Smyrna, and the second, addressed to 
the Ephesians, in the person of their Bishop Onesimus, 
show that the martyr was the worthy follower of St. 
Paul and St. John, the faithful disciple of the Good 
Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep. Ignatius is 
in truth, great as a pastor, because of the great love he 

* er,piOfxaxu> dia OaXdaurjg Kat yrjg. (" Epist. ad Roman.," Hi.) 

We quote from the text given by Bunsen. ("Analecta Ante- 
niccena," i.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 227 

bears to the Churches, and his great devotion to them. 
If he had used some influence in building up episcopal 
power, he had, at least, a heroic conception of the duties 
of a bishop. The counsels which he gave to Polycarp 
on the exercise of his office, are those of a veteran 
transmitting to younger hands the torn banner which 
he himself has valiantly defended. All the images 
employed by him point to the militant state of the 
martyr Church. " Watch," he wrote to Polycarp, 
"like a good soldier of God; the prize is an incor- 
ruptible crown of life. Stand fast in the truth ; be 
like iron under the anvil. It is the part of a good 
soldier to w 7 in, even though wounded. We must be 
ready to bear all for God, that He Himself may bear 
us up. Let thy zeal grow great. Learn to discern 
the times. Consider Him with whom is no time — the 
invisible, inaccessible God, who for us took on Him 
a visible form, who, knowing no sorrow, bowed beneath 
the burden of our woe, and suffered all for us."* 
" Labour, fight, run, suffer together," he adds, ad- 
dressing the Christians of Smyrna ; " seek to please 
Him who has chosen you to be His soldiers and 
servants; He will pay you your wages. Let not one 
of you turn deserter."t The pastor is not merely a 
soldier, in the view of Ignatius ; he is also the watchful 
guardian of the flock, which he is to encompass ever 
with his prayers. "Watch," says he again, "with 
a spirit that never slumbers. Bear thou the burdens 
of all like a strong man. When the agony is great, 
great is the gain.J If thou lovest only the faithiul 

* N?70£ <hg Qeov dOXrjrrjg, artjOi iv aXrjOsia <jjq aKfiwv TV-rrTOfjavog. 
(Ignatius, " Ad Polycarp," i.) 
f " Ad Polycarp," iii. 
J "Ottov ttXuojv kottoq, ttoXv Kal icspdoc. (Ibid., i.) 



228 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

disciples, thou art not merciful. Be long-suffering 
towards the most unworthy of the flock." Thus does 
Ignatius blend gentleness with power. He magnifies 
the office of a bishop, only because he forms so high a 
conception of the greatness of the bishop's responsibility, 
and demands of him nothing less than that he bear 
the burdens and sorrows of his whole Church, after the 
example of Christ Himself. That example he sets 
before Christians, that they may embrace in their large 
compassions the whole human race, and especially 
their most bitter enemies. " Pray," he says, " for 
all men (since there is hope of repentance for them 
also), that they may give themselves to God. Strive 
to enlighten them by your life. Be gentle and pitiful 
when they are insolent and cruel. Give them prayers 
for their blasphemies ; let your steadfastness in the 
faith reprove their errors ; show kindness for their 
hardness, never suffering yourselves to hate as they 
hate. Be followers of the Lord in all meekness. Who 
was ever more despitefully used than He, and shame- 
fully entreated and spitted on ?"* Let us not forget 
that he who thus wrote was himself already on the way 
to the circus at Rome. 

We can imagine how the love of God and of Christ 
glowed in this ardent soul. He wrote to Polycarp : 
" The time has come to desire earnestly the possession 
of God, as the pilot desires the favourable wind, and 
the storm-driven sailor the quiet haven. "t " And now," 
he says to the Romans, " there is not in all my heart 
one spark of desire for aught of earthly good."^: We 
find, indeed, in Ignatius, that which may be called the 
passion for the unseen. In an image full of grandeur, 

* Mj) (nrovdaZovTeg avrifxinrjaacOcu avrovg. ("Ad Ephes.," ii.) 
f " Ad Polycarp," i. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 220, 

he likens death to a glorious sunset, preceding the 
radiant dawn of a divine day.* Faith opens to him 
far-reaching vistas of eternal bliss. Ignatius speaks of 
the cross with a mystical fervour. It is by the cross, 
Christ raises and builds up the living stones into 
the spiritual temple, till the topmost stone is brought 
forth with shoutings to the glory of God.t " My soul," 
he exclaims, "bows down adoring before the cross; 
that scandal of the unbelieving is salvation and eternal 
life to us.";}; He sees in the star followed by the Magi, 
the inauguration of that kingdom of Christ, the mystery 
of which cannot be fathomed by the Tempter, who, 
when he has spent all his efforts, has but prepared the 
way for the great triumph over death. § 

Ignatius has often been reproached for his epistle to 
the Romans, written on hearing that the Christians 
of Rome were making some efforts to obtain grace 
from the emperor. This letter exhibits a fanatic 
desire for martyrdom, and is certainly wanting in that 
admirable equilibrium of feeling, so striking in the 
epistle addressed by St. Paul to the Philippians under 
similar circumstances. The desire for death is not 
kept in subjection with Ignatius, as with the apostle, 
by the clear view of the services he could still render 
to the Church, by continuing in the flesh. His mind 
fixes upon one thing — the deliverance from the fetters 
of earthly life, the triumph with Christ, the full posses- 
sion of God. " I am afraid," he writes to the Chris- 
tians of Rome, when approaching their city, " I am 
afraid of your love. I fear lest it may do me wrong. 

* KaXbv to Svvat airo kog/jiov ~pbg 6ebv, Iva elg avrbv avareiXio. ("Ad 
Roman.," i.) 

f 'Avaftpofisvoi fig ra vipr] cia rijc p.t}x a ^VQ 'Ii]vov Xpicrrov og igti 
cravpbg. ("Ad Ephes./' i.) 

X n.po<TKvv7]/j.a to kfj.bv Trvtv/xa tov GTctvpov. (Ibid., ii.J § Ibid., iii. 



230 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

I shall never again have such an opportunity of entering 
into the full possession of God. Let me become the 
prey of the wild beasts, that God may become wholly 
mine. I am God's wheat ; the teeth of the fierce 
beasts will but bruise me, that I may be changed, 
into the fine bread of my God. Rather, then, do ye 
encourage the beasts, that they may become my tomb, 
and leave nought of my body to oppress me in my last 
sleep. I shall be a true disciple of Jesus Christ when 
the world sees my body no more."* These words are 
evidently the passionate expression of overwrought 
feeling. Ignatius would have been more truly like his 
Master, had he less ardently panted after martyrdom, 
and waited with patience till he also could say, "The 
hour is come ; " as it assuredly did come in that age 
to every faithful witness of the truth. If, however, 
his impatience to die was excessive, that very excess 
was not without a salutary effect, at a time when the 
alternative of apostasy or death was about to be offered 
to thousands of Christians. They would remember 
with what joy Ignatius had entered the arena, the dust 
of which was to lick up the blood of so many martyrs ; 
and above the roaring of the lions and the imprecations 
of the crowd, they would hear the joyous tones of his 
triumphal hymn, "Welcome, nails and cross ; welcome 
broken bones, violence of fierce beasts, wounded limbs 
and bruised body ; welcome all diabolic torture, if I may 
but obtain Jesus Christ. "t 

It is only just to remark further, that Ignatius had no 
idea of procuring to himself any merit towards God by 
his suffering. His humility was as great as his courage. 
After writing to the Ephesians, that it is better to be a 
Christian even in silence, than to speak without being 

* " Ad Roman.," iv. f "iva 'irjaov Xpiarov £7rtrv%w. (Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 23I 

so — in other words, that seeming is nothing, reality 
everything,* he says to the Romans, " Ask for me 
that I may have strength without and within, so that I 
may not merely speak but feel, that I may not be a 
Christian in word only but in deed and in truth. If I 
am found thus, I may be pronounced faithful, for 
then I shall not only appear so in the eyes of the 
world. Nothing that seems good to the world is truly 
good. Christianity not only commends its doctrine 
when it is hated of the world, but only then reaches its 
true grandeur." f Again, " Being now close to Rome," 
he wrote, " I think of many things in God ; but I keep 
myself in subjection, lest I should yield to pride. It is 
a moment in which to tremble, lest I should be exalted 
above measure. Those who call me martyr, scourge 
me. I rejoice in the suffering, but I know not if I am 
worthy of it. "J That which Ignatius so eagerly sought 
in death, was the full possession of Jesus Christ. 
" I crave for no mortal food ; I desire no earthly 
pleasure. I want the bread of God,§ which is the body 
of Christ ; I want to drink His blood, which is immortal 
love." These words reveal the whole soul of Ignatius, 
the deep piety, the fervent love to Christ, and the tone 
of exalted and mystical feeling, which is ordinary to 
him. It is easy to understand how such a man might 
become an object of ridicule in the eyes of the cynical 
and sceptical philosophers of an age of declining piety. 
After enduring torture in humility and obscurity, 
Ignatius was made the victim of the biting raillery 

* "Aftetvov f.<tti Gaowav Kal dvai y \a\ovvra. p.r) elvai. (" Ad 
Ephes.," ii.) 

f OiiSev (paivofievov dyaOov. Ov neiapovriQ to' apyov, d\\d fxeykOovQ 
hotIv xpinriavKTiibg orav fiia>t]rai v7rb Koarfiov. (" Ad Roman.,' 7 i.) 

X Oi yap XsyovrsQ p.01 fxdprvg fiaanyovcri p.£. (Ibid., V.) 

§ "Aprov Oeov Os\(d. (Ibid., iv.) 



232 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of Lucian, who, as we shall presently show, was 
undoubtedly aiming at him in his " Peregrinus," little 
deeming, when he did so, that he was furnishing 
valuable evidence to those who in after days would 
seek to establish the authenticity of the martyr's 
letters. 

The " Acts of Ignatius " narrate in detail the circum- 
stances preceding his torture, the impatience of the 
soldiers who hurried on his march, in order to arrive 
in Rome before the end of the public games ; the 
eagerness of the Christians to meet him, and finally, 
his last words, obviously borrowed from his letters.* 
This whole story, however, is of no historical value. 
Like St. Peter and St. Paul, Ignatius came to his end 
obscurely. Nothing is more remote from the melo- 
dramatic than the death of the saints. 

He left behind him, in Asia Minor, a young man, 
raised, perhaps by John himself,t to the office of elder 
in the Church of Smyrna, and destined to exercise a 
great influence over the Christians in those countries. 
This young man was Polycarp. Ignatius had already 
noted in him remarkable steadfastness in the faith.J 
He was planted upon the rock of apostolic teaching. 
The Church which he governed was one of the most 
flourishing in Asia Minor, and is exhibited to us in the 
Revelation as displaying courageous fidelity under 
persecution. § Polycarp had been the immediate dis- 
ciple of St. John, and ever cherished his sacred memory. 
It was the constant theme of his conversation and 

* See these details in the "Acta Ignatii;" Haefele, "Patres 
Apostol.," 53-57 ; Cotelier, II. 171. 

f Tertullian, " De Prsescript.," xxxii. 

j " Having known," says Ignatius, " thy doctrine founded in 
God as on a rock that cannot be shaken." (Qg kwl Trkrpav atzivriTov.) 
"Ad Polycarp," i.) § Rev. ii. 8-1 1. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 233 

preaching. Irenseus, who was the disciple of Polycarp, 
writes : " I could point out the spot where the blessed 
Polycarp sat to teach. I could describe his gait, his 
countenance, all his habits, even the clothes he was 
accustomed to wear. I could repeat the discourses 
which he delivered to the people, and recall all that he 
said of his intimacy with St. John, and the narratives 
he used to relate about those who had seen the Lord 
upon earth. His memory was constantly dwelling on 
that which they had told him of the words, the 
miracles, the doctrine of Christ."* This valuable 
testimony shows- how eminently qualified was Polycarp, 
for effecting the transition from the apostolic to the 
following age. He delighted to be the docile, almost 
passive echo of the apostles. It is not surprising, 
therefore, that he should not have displayed much 
originality, though commanding such universal respect. 
He was the living tradition of the Church. His letter 
to the Philippians is quite in harmony with the idea 
Irenseus gives us of . him. t He appeals perpetually to 

* Kal irkpi tov KVpiov riva r\v a Ttapa skuvciv aicrjicoei. (Irenaeus, 
" Epist. ad Florinum," in Eusebius, "H. E.," V. xx.) 

f The genuineness of this letter has been called in question by 
Daille, and in our own day by Schwegler and Baur ; but their 
objections rest on an a priori argument. The external evidence is 
very strongly in its favour. The testimony of Irenasus, the disciple 
of Polycarp, is of great weight. (Irenaeus, "Adv. Haeres.," III. 
iii. ; Eusebius, " H. E.." IV. xiv., III. xxxvi. ; St. Jerome, " Catal. 
Script. Eccles.," xvii.) The question of its integrity is more 
difficult. The two last chapters seem like an interpolation, and 
possibly we may recognise in them the same hand which made 
additions to the epistles of Ignatius. We find a proof of this 
interpolation in a singular contradiction between chapters ix. and 
xiii. In chapter ix., Ignatius is represented as already dead ; and in 
chapter xiii., the author asks for tidings of him, as if he were still 
living. " Et de ipso Ignatio et de his, qui cum eo sunt, quod 
certius agnoveritis significate." (See Bunsen, " Ignatius und seine 
Zeit," 118.) 

16 



234 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the memory of the apostles, and as he is addressing 
a Church founded by St. Paul, he invokes especially 
the name of the apostle of the Gentiles. " It is not 
in arrogance," he says, " I write to you these things, 
but because you have constrained me. In truth, I am 
not more able than any other, to reproduce the wisdom 
of the blessed and glorious Paul, who, when he was 
with you, taught you the truth with all firmness and 
faithfulness, and who, being absent, wrote to you 
epistles, by which, if you rightly give heed to them, you 
will be built up in the faith."* His epistle, written 
shortly after the death of Ignatius, gives evidence that 
he had already attained a remarkable maturity in the 
Christian life. It is especially valuable for the infor- 
mation it contains as to the internal condition of the 
Churches. Polycarp sets himself to redress some 
abuses which had crept in at Philippi ; he especially 
deprecates the love of money, which had become the 
cause of grave disorders. Like his master, he burns 
with indignation against heresy, and upbraids it in 
words which call to mind the epistles of John. He 
says: " He who wrests, according to his own evil heart, 
the words of the Lord Jesus, saying that there is no 
resurrection or judgment, is the firstborn of Satan. t 
I pray you all to give heed to the word of righteousness, 
and to exercise yourselves in all patience, as has been 
done, not only by those whom you have seen — Ignatius, 
Sozimus, and Rufus — but by many others who have 
gone forth from you, as well as by Paul and the other 
apostles."J Polycarp is ever a faithful follower of 
tradition ; his gaze turns by preference backwards. A 
very ancient biography, annexed to an old Latin 

*"AdPhilipp.,"iii. f m t Ibid. 

£ 'A<jKtZv ttclgolv v-Ko\iovr\v. (Ibid., ix.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 235 

manuscript of his epistle, speaks of him as the first 
bishop of Asia.* This aspiring epithet gives proof 
of his great influence. The latter part of his life 
belongs not to the transition era, but to the history 
of the second century. We shall have occasion to 
recur to it presently. It is enough for us now to 
remark that he repaired to Rome to confer with 
Anicetus on the question of Easter, and that he there 
met Marcion, whom he treated very roughly. He was 
put to death under Marcus Aurelius. The "Acts 
of his Martyrdom " is a valuable document for the 
history of the persecutions under the Antonines.t If 
Polycarp showed less impatience for death than 
Ignatius, he was no less courageous when the hour 
of suffering came. He had fled into the country to 
escape his pursuers, and was betrayed, under stress 
of torture, by a young man, who knew of his hiding- 
place. Aged as he was, his spirit never for a moment 
faltered. None can forget his reply to the proconsul, 
who urged him to blaspheme Christ and save his life. 
"Eighty and six years have I served Him," Polycarp 
answered, "and He has done me no wrong. How then 
shall I curse my King and my Saviour ?"J The follow- 
ing prayer, of which there is no reason to doubt the 
genuineness, is said to be his: "Almighty God, the 
Father of Thy well-beloved Son Jesus Christ, by whom- 
we have learned to know Thee, I bless Thee that Thou 
hast counted me worthy, in this day and in this 

* " Totius Asiae princeps." (" Patrum Apost. Opera," Edit. 
Dressel, " Prolegomena," 34.) 

t The "Acts of Polycarp's Martyrdom" are of the highest an- 
tiquity. (See Eusebius, "H. E " IV. xv.) Irenaeus (" Adv. Haeres.," 
III. lii.) appears to be acquainted with them. The legendary 
character of the close suggests an interpolation. 

X n.u>g 8vva/xaL j5\aa(pr}jxi}Gai. tov fia<Ji\ka /j,ov,rbv G&aavTct fit. (" Acta 
Martyr. Polyc," vii.) 



236 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

hour, to take a place among Thy martyrs, and to drink 
of the cup of Thy Christ, for the resurrection unto 
eternal life of my soul and body. May I be accepted 
of Thee as a sacrifice well-pleasing in Thy sight. I 
laud, I bless, I magnify Thee for all that which has 
befallen me."* 

Two other apostolic Fathers form part of this group 
of the representatives of Paul's teaching : Quadratus, 
Bishop of Athens, and Aristides the philosopher, the 
two first apologists of Christianity. They belong to 
the transition period, for Quadratus says, in the fragment 
of his "Apology" which has come down to us, that there 
w r ere still in his day some miraculous cures wrought by 
Jesus Christ. t All we know of these two writers is, 
that both pleaded the cause of Christianity with 
the Emperor Adrian. J Aristides evidently belonged 
to a school far removed from Judaism, since he ap- 
peals without hesitation to the testimony of the Greek 
philosophers. St. Jerome regards the "Apology" of 
Quadratus as a very useful book, full of reason and 
of faith. § 

§ II. The Fathers of the Church under the Antonines.\\ 

If we except Polycarp, who belongs rather to the 
age of the apostolic Fathers, we have only two names 
to quote during this period. Justin Martyr and Irenaeus 
leave far behind all the other teachers or bishops of the 

* "Acta Polyc," xiv. f Routh, " Reliq. Sacrae," I. 75. 

% St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," xix. 

§ " Librum valide utilem plerumque rationis et fidei." (Ibid.) 

|| Works to be consulted are : Eusebius, " H. E. ," IV. xii. xiii. 
xxi.-xxx. Jerome, " De Viris Illustribus." Anastasii, " Liber 
Pontificalis." Routh, " Reliq. Sacrae," I. Lenain de Tillemont, 
" Memoires," Vols. III., IV. Bcehringer, " Die Kirche Christiund 
iheZeugen,"Vol. I. Miiller, " Patrologie." Herzog, "Encyclopaedia." 

• 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 237 

age of the Antonines. The most important episcopal sees 
are occupied by men of fervent piety and firm courage, 
but of only average, and sometimes narrow, intellect. 
The Church of Rome had in succession, at its head, 
Sixtus, who was arrested in the catacombs ; Tele- 
sphorus, whose martyrdom produced a deep sensation ;* 
and Anicetus, distinguished for his large and liberal 
views, though differing from Polycarp on some secondary 
points. Anicetus never ceased to show a respectful 
deference to him, and during Polycarp's sojourn in 
Rome, asked him to preside, instead of himself, at a 
consecration of elders. t To Anicetus succeeded, first, 
Soter, whose active charity! is known to us through 
Dionysius of Corinth ; then Eleuther and Victor, the 
latter of whom made himself prominent by his despotic 
pretensions in the question of Easter, and called forth, 
at the beginning of the succeeding period, a lively and 
legitimate opposition on the part of the bishops of Asia 
Minor and Gaul. 

During the bishopric of Anicetus there arrived in 
Rome a Christian from Palestine, already known for 
his piety, who had undertaken a long journey to inquire 
into the state of the Churches. He was named 
Hegesippus. The cast of his mind was thoroughly 
Jewish ;§ he was an entire stranger to the speculative 

* "Og Kai sv86Zu)g l/xaprvp^aev. (EusebillS, " H. E.," V. vi.) 

t Ibid., VI. xxiv. 

X After speaking of the charity of the Roman Christians, 
Dionysius, alluding to Soter, adds: "9 ov \i6vgv diaTsrrjpqKsv bp.aKa.pioQ 
iiH&v ettiVkottoc. i"Your blessed Bishop Soter also cherished this 
charity.") (Eusebius, " H. E.," IV. xxiii.) 

§ Hegesippus made many translations from the Hebrew. 
Eusebius (" H. E.," V. xxii.) infers from this that he was a con- 
vert from Judaism to Christianity; but it is quite possible that 
he may have been born in Palestine, without having belonged to 
the synagogue. 



238 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

genius of Greece, and paid more attention to facts than 
to ideas. He found himself, therefore, much at home 
in the Church of Rome, which in many respects 
corresponded to the Judaic type. Hegesippus had met, 
on board the vessel in which he made his voyage, 
Primus, Bishop of Corinth, and had had much conver- 
sation with him.* At his invitation, he had spent 
some time in the Church of Corinth, and had rejoiced 
to find the Christians there walking in all things 
according to apostolic tradition. t To him, tradition 
was a thing of primary importance ; he even attached 
some value to the oral tradition of the Jews. J He 
ignored the truth that in Christianity, even more than 
in Judaism, conformity to the letter by no means 
necessarily implies conformity to the spirit. Injustice, 
however, has been done to Hegesippus, when he has been 
regarded as a Judaising-Christian. The high esteem 
in which he was held in Greece and Rome, the explicit 
adherence he gives to the doctrine which predominated 
in the West, negative any such idea. Hegesippus had 
undoubtedly a mind of Jewish order. James, of whom 
he has drawn a striking portrait, § was his ideal, rather 
than St. Paul ; but he does not diverge on a single 
point from the orthodoxy of his time ; he is, indeed, 
only too much in accord with the Western Church in 
the extravagant love of tradition. His first concern 
at Rome was to draw up an exact list of the bishops 
who had succeeded each other in the government of 



* ^vv'fjxila 7r\'f(x)v rig 'Pioprjv. (Eusebius, "H. E.," IV. xxii. ; 
Routh, " Reliq. Sacrae," I. 217.) 

-J- "Evvave—drjuev rip 6p6u> \6yoi. (Ibid.) 

j "A\\a Se ojq it, 'lovcdiKiiQ aypdcpov 7rapa56aedjg fivrj/xovevai. 
(Eusebius, " H. E., w IV. xxii.) 

§ See this portrait. (Eusebius, " H. E.," II. xxii.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 239 

that Church.* His memoirs appear to have been 
rather a polemical treatise against the heretics than a 
history, properly so called, of the first ages of the 
Church. t His leaning to tradition leads him to give 
the foremost pl-ace in his dissertations to the exposi- 
tion of facts. 

A short time after Hegesippus' journey to Corinth, 
the Church of that city was governed by a bishop who 
exerted a very wide influence. Dionysius had as much 
eloquence as learning ; % by his activity in correspon- 
dence he took the oversight of a large diocese, sending 
his counsels throughout Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy. 
"Not content," says Eusebius, "with the labours of 
his diocese, he generously extended his benefits to the 
other Churches. "§ Dionysius was a true member 
of the Church universal, a representative of real Catho- 
licity. Such largeness of heart and breadth of charity 
were becoming more and more rare, while hierarchical 
lines of division were fast multiplying. Dionysius of 
Corinth was not a man of great intellect ; his letters 
indicate a certain amount of credulity. For example, 

* TevofitvoQ ce Iv 'Puifiy ciacoxvv s~oi7i<TajU£V //£%pic ' Avixvtov. 
(Eusebius. "H. E.," II. xxii.) See in Routh, "Reliq. Sacras," I. 
270, the note on these words. 

t Jerome has represented the writings of Hegesippus too much 
as a consecutive history, when he says : " Omnes a passione 
Domini usque ad suam aetatem ecclesiasticarum actuam texeus 
historias." [" De Viris Illustr.," xxii.) Eusebius only says that 
Hegesippus has presented in the simplest manner apostolic 
teaching : T})v cnrkavtj irapacocFLV rov uttootoXikov K7]pvyfJ.arog. (Euse- 
bius, "H. E.,-' IV. xxii.) 

I " Dionysius Corinthiorum ecclesiae episcopus tantae eloquentiae 
et industrial fuit ut non solum civitates et provincial populis sed 
et aliarum urbium et provinciarum epistolis erudiret." (Jerome, 
"De Viris Illustr.," xxvii.) 

§ 'Qg rrjg kvQkov (piKoiroviag oh \iovov rolg vk avrov aXX' i'jSri icai roXg 
eiri T7jg aWoccnrrii; dcpOovwg Uoivdjvei. (Eusebius, " H. E., ,; IV. xxiii.) 
The list of his letters is given in Eusebius. 



240 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

he accepts without examination an absurd legend 
current in Corinth, according to which that Church 
owed its foundation to the united efforts of Peter and 
Paul.* He exhibits no great learning nor force of 
argument, but all the fragments of his" writings which 
remain, are full of benevolence ; they breathe the 
spirit of primitive times, the spirit of living Christian 
unity. This atones for many errors. Dionysius of 
Corinth pleads that a helping hand be held out to 
Christians who have fallen and are repentant ; he wisely 
counsels Pinytus, Bishop of the Church of Pontus, who 
seems to have been an ardent follower after imaginary 
perfection, not to push the practice of asceticism to 
extremes, because of the weakness of the flesh. t 

At the same time, Athenagoras the apologist was 
living in Athens. In Asia Minor we find several influ- 
ential bishops, almost all engaged in the conflict with 
heresy, and in the determination of the date of the 
Easter festival. First among these is Apollinaris, 
Bishop of Hieropolis, who is already known to us by his 
Apology, and who endeavours to crush the nascent heresy 
of Montanus.J He wrote two books against the Jews, 
and a treatise on the Easter festival. He was a man 
of strong and cultivated mind, and pleaded the cause of 
the Church with wisdom and dignity. Theodoret said 
of him subsequently, that he was versed in all sacred 
and profane literature. § Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," II. xxv. 

f 1YI/7 fiapv <pbpTiov Tolg ddeXtyoh iiriTiQkvai. (Eusebius, " H. E.," 
IV. xxiii.) Pinytus expresses the desire, in his reply to Dionysius, 
that the latter would not content himself with offering the milk of 
children to the Christian people, but would give them also the 
strong meat. It is easy to understand his meaning. 

% St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," xxiv. ; Eusebius, "H. E.," 
IV. xxvii. 

§ Theodoret, " Hasretic Fabul. Compend.," III. ii. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 24I 

displayed a zeal equal to that of Apollinaris, in the 
polemics against heresy, and in the defence of Chris- 
tianity. His book " To Antolicus " is a philosophical 
apology for the new religion, too deeply tinged with 
Platonism. He wrote a treatise against Marcion. He 
is also known by his commentaries upon Scripture.* 
Serapion, who presided after him over the Church 
of Antioch, was distinguished in the controversy against 
Montanism.t We may mention also Philip, Bishop of 
Crete, who, as well as Modestus, engaged in controversy 
with Marcion ; Rhodo, at first a disciple of Tatian, 
afterwards an opponent of Gnosticism ; Musanus, 
known for his refutation of the heresy of the Encratites; 
Apollonius, whose writings against the Montanists 
were afterwards refuted by Tertullian.J The most 
eminent bishop of Asia Minor at this period was 
Melito of Sardis, apologist and theologian. St. Jerome 
extols his eloquence. § He took part in all the 
controversies, and treated of all the great questions 
of his day. He defended Christianity against the 
calumnies of the people and the sophistries of the 
philosophers ; in opposition to Marcion, he established 
the dogma of the Incarnation, and maintained the 
oriental practice in the celebration of Easter. To 
judge by the title of one of his works, " The Key," he 
appears to have lent the force of his example to the sym- 
bolical exegesis, for which Christian antiquity had so 
decided a taste. But his especial study was prophecy. 
Not satisfied with making known the life of the great 
prophets, he also wrote a commentary on the Revela- 
tion; full of ardent anticipation of the return of Jesus 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," IV. xxiv. ; St. Jerome, " De Viris 
Illustr.," xxv. t Ibid., xlvii. 

I Ibid., xxx. xxxi. xxxii. xxxvii. xl. 
'§ "Hujus elegans et declamatorium ingenium." (Ibid., xxiii.) 



242 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Christ.* Melito carried a generous enthusiasm into 
all he said and did. Thus, h& did not hesitate to 
undertake a long journey in Palestine to acquire in- 
formation as to the canonicity of the Old Testament. 
He was an extreme ascetic, and Polycarp called him 
the Eunuch Melito, alluding no doubt to those who, the 
Gospel says, have made themselves eunuchs for the 
kingdom of God's sake.t " He did all," says Polycarp 
again, " under the guidance of the Divine Spirit, and 
the Church recognised in him a true prophet. "J We 
can well understand the lively admiration felt by the 
Church for a bishop who had defended it against both 
paganism and heresy, and who, without deviating from 
the straight road of orthodoxy, yet gratified the favourite 
tendencies of the Church, by the ascetic severity of his 
life, the subtlety of his symbolism, and the oriental 
tone of his prophetic teachings. 

The Church of Asia had also at this period a bishop 
of great eminence. This was Polycrates of Ephesus, 
who wrote at the close of the second century a powerful 
letter to Victor, in which he conveys the positive 
decision arrived at by the bishops of Asia Minor, 

* The list of his various works (St. Jerome, "De Viris Illustr.." 
xxv., and Eusebius, "H.E.," V. xxiv.) shows the variety of his 
studies. Beside his " Apology," he is known as the author of the 
following books : " A Treatise upon Easter," " De Sensibus," " De 
die Dominica," " De Fide," " De Plasmate," " De Anima et 
Corpere," " De Baptismo," " De Veritate," " De Generatione 
Christi," "De Ecclesia," "De Philoxenia," " De Vita Pro- 
phetarum," " De -Prophetia," " De Apocalypse," " Clavis." The 
reproduction which the " Spicilegium Solemnense" pretends to give 
of this last work (Vols. III. and IV.) has no character of authen- 
ticity. It is an apocryphal compilation. The fragments of the 
writings of Melito are collected in Routh, "Reliq. Sacrae," I. 119. 

f Eusebius, " H. E.," V. xxiv. 

X Tbv tv ayu>) TrvevjxaTi 7rdvra 7ro\iT£vcraf.i£vov. (Ibid.) " Tertul- 
lianus dicit eum a plerisque nostrorum prophetam putari." iSt*. 
Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," xxiv.) 



BOOK II.— THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 243 

assembled at Caesarea, to adhere to the oriental practice 
in the observance of Easter.* 

We have already spoken of Justin Martyr as the 
firm and eloquent advocate of Christianity with the em- 
perors, t Let us now endeavour to sketch the features 
of his moral character as manifested in his life. 

Justin was born, in the year 103, at Nicopolis, of a 
pagan family, which had probably emigrated from Greece 
into Samaria, at the commencement of the second 
century 7 . He was thus placed from his cradle midway 
between Judaism and Paganism, both of which he was 
in turn victoriously to combat. He seems to have 
possessed some private fortune, which enabled him to un- 
dertake numerous journeys. He was completely the man 
of his age, familiar with all its troubles and sufferings, 
though escaping its corruption. He represented its best 
aspirations, free from the impure admixture which else- 
where stifled or alloyed them. The dreary void left in 
the world by the dethroned gods, whose place was still 
unfilled; the restless disquiet of heart, the craving after 
truth, while truth seemed to flee before the seeker like the 
mirage of the desert sand, — all thsse characteristic traits 
of the crisis of the age were found in this young orien- 
tal Greek, whose earnest, impassioned soul proudly 
rejected the base allurements of a brilliant and corrupt 
state of society, the luxury of which was equalled by its 
licentiousness. He was as much a stranger to vulgar 
ambition as to sensual gratifications. No frequenter 
of the Forum, of camps or of palaces, he had early 

* St. Jerome, "De Viris IUustr.," xlv. ; Eusebius, "H. E./'V. xxii. 

f See Eusebius on Justin (" H. E.," IV. xvi ; St. Jerome, "De 
Viris Illustr. " xxiii.) The details of his conversion are contained 
in the Introduction to his " Dial, cum Tryph." In addition to 
the Church historians already mentioned, we shall quote Semisch's 
" Monograph," 1850. 



244 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

assumed the mantle of the philosopher, and set before 
him as his aim, the acquisition of truth. This he was 
resolved to seek till he should find, and if need be to 
travel over the whole world in his search. In this age 
of universal eclecticism, all the old schools had their 
representatives, and it was possible in a few years 
to pursue the whole course marked out by centuries 
of human thought. Justin pursued unwearyingly this 
toilsome pilgrimage, which, apart from the Gospel, led 
to neither resting-place nor goal. He has described 
with eloquent simplicity this troubled period of his life, 
in which each new effort ended only in deeper disappoint- 
ment. His first halting-place was the Stoical school, 
which by its austerity was wont to attract to itself lofty 
and noble spirits ; but had he become a full disciple 
of this school, he must have renounced the great 
problems of philosophy, which were forbidden to its 
alumni as a puerile amusement. Beneath this proud pre- 
tension there lurked, in truth, an unworthy surrender 
of the powers of thought. The young Greek, whose soul 
was burning to comprehend the deep things of metaphy- 
sics, soon turned away from these masters, who hid 
their impotence under a veil of scorn, and turned to the 
Peripatetics. In the teacher to whom he thus addressed 
himself, however, he found one who sought lucre rather 
than true learning, and professed philosophy for the sake 
of the honorarium it brought. Nothing could be more 
irritating than such a discovery to a mind like Justin's, 
seeking the pure ideal, and he broke away at once 
from the Peripatetics. At this period the ancient 
Pythagorean school was in great repute, owing to its 
oriental mysticism, which harmonised with the then 
predominant current of thought. Justin came up to this 
door and knocked ; but while Plato had been content 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 245 

with inscribing over the portal of his school, " None but 
a geometrician may enter here," the Pythagorean de- 
manded, as the condition of entrance, not only a perfect 
acquaintance with geometry, but also with music and as- 
tronomy. Justin Martyr was not a man of simply curious 
mind, he had a soul hungering and thirsting after light 
and truth. Such an initiation as was thus demanded, 
would have required a lifetime of labour ; and a know- 
ledge of "the stars and of musical measures seemed to 
him of secondary importance, compared with that which 
he longed to know. To gain it would be to spend life 
in the porch of the Temple, without ever entering the 
holy place. In following next the steps of the Platonist 
school, Justin thought that he had at length crossed 
the sacred threshold. He was entranced with the 
contemplation of the ideal world presented to him ; 
he seemed to have found wings with which to soar above 
himself. But this ideal world was a cold region of pure 
intellect, whose pallid gleam, struggling with shadows, 
could not warm the heart or change the life. Once 
again Justin turned away baffled. He had already some 
vague notions of the truth of Christianity. He tells 
us in his second "Apology" of the deep impression 
produced upon him by the sight of the martyrs. He 
says: "At the time when I was delighting in the 
doctrines of Plato, and even while I was listening to the 
calumnies cast upon the Christians, I said to myself, 
as I saw them so dauntless in death and in the midst 
of perils which the world esteems so terrible, that it 
was impossible they should be men living in lust and 
crime."* This heart-stirring spectacle had prepared 
him to receive the call of God. 

* 'Opuii' a<t>6f3ovQ 7rpbg Qavarov Ivevoovv adivarov dvai iv KaKia kcu 
<pikt]Sovi$. (Justin, " Opera," 50.) 



246 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Seeking solitude, that he might meditate with a mind 
more disengaged from outward things, he was walking 
one day by the side of a lake in his own country, when 
he met an aged man, whose countenance was full of 
gravity and sweetness. He looked like a philosopher, 
but one who had found peace in his philosophy. They 
entered naturally into conversation. The old man could 
read in Justin's face the feeling with which his heart 
was filled — the unslaked thirst after truth. He skilfully 
touched the vulnerable point, by showing the young man 
that his philosophy had no influence on his moral life, 
and still left him a prey to the most agonising un- 
certainty on the gravest problems. ''Where, then," 
exclaimed Justin, "is the truth to be found, if not among 
the philosophers ? " " Long before the philosophers," 
the old man replied, "there lived in the olden times 
happy and righteous men, the friends of God ; they 
spoke by His Spirit ; they were called prophets ; they 
told to men that which they had heard and learned 
from the Holy Spirit ; they worshipped God, the 
Creator and Father of all creatures ; they adored 
His Son Jesus Christ. Ask thou that the gates of 
light may be opened to thee now."* This had been 
Justin's one desire from his youth up; the old man had 
shown him in what direction to look for the opening 
ol those gates of light. Having listened to the philo- 
sophers, he now turns to the prophets and to Him 
who is as far above the greatest of the prophets, as 
the heaven is above the earth — the Eternal Word, of 
whom he will be henceforward the full and faithiul 
witness. 

The conversion of Justin was the consummation 
01 a long inward struggle. He did not leel himseh 

* Justin, " Opera," 225. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 247 

bound as a Christian, to overturn the ladder by which 
he had painfully climbed to the footstool of the truth. 
He always regarded Platonism as a preparation of the 
heathen world for Christianity, and he read the history 
of humanity in the light of his own personal experience. 
He knew that before he became* acquainted with the 
true, living Christ, through the medium of revelation, 
he had been led to yearn after Him by his studies 
in philosophy, and yet more by the deepest needs of his 
own heart and mind. The Word did not come like 
a stranger to him ; a dim prophetic dawn had filled his 
soul, before the sun shone forth upon him in its strength 
and the fulness of the noontide light did not make him 
despise the early glimmerings of the day. Persuaded 
that the same aspirations might lead to the same results 
in others, he was ever anxious to appeal to these secret 
yearnings, to this latent fragmentary form of Christianity, 
which needed only the completion which the Gospel 
brought, in order to lead his contemporaries to the foot 
of the Cross. Justin, as a Christian, did not therefore 
cease to respect philosophy, and in order to make 
it patent to all that in becoming a disciple of Jesus 
Christ, he had not abandoned the quest and love 
of wisdom, but on the contrary had had revealed to him 
the highest wisdom, he still wore the mantle of the 
philosopher. He did so from no desire to escape the 
honourable reproach of the disciples of J,esus Christ. 
"I have cast aside," he says, "all the vain desires 
of men, I glory now only in being a Christian, and there 
is nothing I so much desire as to appear as a Christian 
in the face of the world."* Henceforward, the entire 
life of Justin will be one ardent apostolate ; a lay apos- 
tolate indeed, resting on no other authority than that 

* XpioTiavoQ evpsOfjvai /cat tvxofitvog. (~ 



248 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

conferred by his own zeal and fervent convictions, 
but none the less real.* His long and earnest 
pursuit of truth made him esteem it at its true value ; 
he had experienced all the mental struggles of his 
contemporaries, and thus knowing at once the sick- 
ness and the remedy, he was admirably prepared 
to be an effective missionary — one of those true com- 
forters, who have learned by their own experience 
of suffering how to solace others. He never lost 
for a single day the sense of the deep responsibility 
resting on the witness of the truth. He felt this 
equally in regard to Jews, pagans, and heretics. While 
acknowledging that nothing was more difficult to 
overcome than the obstinacy of the adherents of the 
synagogue, he thus addressed them: "I know that, 
as the Word of God has said, this great wisdom is 
hidden from your eyes. It is in compassion for you 
that I feel constrained, cost me what it may, to plead with 
you to believe these Divine paradoxes, that I may at least 
be found guiltless in the day of judgment. "t " The 
fear of the judgment of God," he says again, " makes 
me not cease to confer with the men of your nation, to 
see if I may not find some one among you, who may 
be saved by the grace of the Lord of hosts."]: " I 
must tell you, without flattery or disguise, all that 
I think. Has not the Lord said, ' The sower went 
forth to sov* ' ? I must needs speak in the hope that 
some word may fall like seed into good ground ;§ for 
the Lord, when He comes again in power and great 
glory, will call every one to account for that which 

* Lenain de Tillemont (" Memoires," Vol. II. p. 389) assumes, 
without any sort of reason, that Justin was a priest of the Church 
of Rome. 

f SvpiraQGtv vfiiv. (Justin, " Opera," 256.) J Ibid., 249. 

§ 'EXtt/^i ovv tov eivai rcov koXtjv yrjv, Xsyeiv del. (Ibid.. 3 54.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 249 

he has received."* Justin declared again and again 
in his "Apology" that he should hold himself guilty of 
the ignorance of the pagans, if he did not do all in his 
power to dispel it. He felt an equal responsibility 
with regard to the heretics. " Hence it is," he says, 
"that we seek every opportunity to confer with 
you." He epitomises all that he feels on this subject 
in this noble utterance : " Ever}^ man who can bear 
witness to the truth, and does it not, will be judged 
of God. "t 

Faithful to his convictions, Justin never for a day 
relaxed his efforts to spread the faith. We have seen 
with how much dignity in his two Apologies he defends 
the Church before the emperors. Not content with this 
public and striking testimony, he has repeated confer- 
ences with the Jews and pagans wherever he meets 
them, and as the time for pronouncing summary anathe- 
mas has not yet come, he employs the same means with 
the heretics. In these discussions he exhibits great 
patience and firmness; it is evident that he is always 
actuated by the purest motives. He appears to have 
travelled much. We find him at Ephesus, where his 
famous interview with the Jew Trypho took place, the 
memory of which he has preserved to us in writing. 
Again we see him at Rome, opposing a false philosopher 
named Crescens, connected with the sect of the Cynics. 
Such courageous fidelity deserved to be owned and 
recompensed ; this apostolic man was to wear the 
crown of an apostle. Already, in his second Apology, 
Justin Martyr expresses his foreboding of his approach- 
ing end. "I expect," he says, "to be taken in the 

* Justin, "Opera," 51-56. 

f E'iSoreg on iraq 6 dwd/jLtvog Xsyuv to d\r]9kg mat fxr) Xtywv KpiQr)ctTcu 
vtto tov Qiov. (Ibid., 308.) 

17 



250 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

toils of these false philosophers, and to suffer a death of 
ignominy, perhaps at the instigation of Crescens, who 
better deserves to be called the friend of fame and 
of luxury, than the friend of wisdom. He publicly 
charges the Christians with atheism and impiety, and 
that without any evidence, and merely to gratify the 
prejudices of the people."* Justin tells us that he had 
in public closed Crescens' mouth. The latter, in his 
anger, sought to avenge himself as a man of such a 
disposition and of such a school would naturally do ; 
and it was probably on his denunciation that Justin 
was thrown into prison. He appeared with some fellow 
Christians before the tribunal of the prefect of the city. 
Strangely enough, this magistrate was a philosopher of 
the Stoics — Rusticus, one of the instructors of Marcus 
Aurelius. The two doctrines were brought face to face, 
the one seated on the judgment-seat, the other at the 
bar. The unworthy spirit manifested by the pagan 
philosophers under such circumstances, is peculiarly 
marked in the case of Justin. He was, as he had 
always been, dignified and firm, without bravado. He 
plainly confessed the great philosophy of Christ, in 
which, after such long and weary seeking, he had found 
rest at last. When asked to define this philosophy, he 
expressed, in a few forcible words, his faith in the God 
of heaven and earth, and in His Son, "the Master of 
truth," adding humbly, "that he was too unworthy 
to say anything worthy of Him." The prefect, inter- 
spersing his interrogatory with jocose raillery, asked 
Justin if he supposed he would ascend into heaven when 
his head was cut off. "I know it," he said; "yes, 
beyond all power to doubt, I know it." When he was 

* K^'yw ovv 7rpo<rdoKu> 67n(3ovXtv67JyaL icai £u\^ e/J.7rajfjvai. (Justin, 
" Opera/' 46.) 



BOOK II.— THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 251 

urged to offer sacrifice, he replied, " Our great desire 
is to suffer for Christ ; for that will give us confidence 
before His awful judgment-seat, at the bar of which the 
whole world will have to stand." The sentence was 
pronounced and executed the same day.* Thus died 
Justin, rightly surnamed by the ancient Church, "Justin 
the Martyr;" for the truth never had a witness more 
disinterested, more courageous, more worthy of the 
hatred of a godless age and of the approval of Heaven. 
The largeness of his heart and mind equalled the fer- 
vour of his zeal, and both were based on his Christian 
charity. Justin derived all his eloquence from his 
heart ; his natural genius was not of rare order, but the 
experiences of his early life, illumined by revelation, 
became the source of much fruitful suggestion for him- 
self, and gave to the Church a heritage of thought, 
which, ripened and developed at Alexandria, was to 
become the basis of the great apology of Christianity. 
If we except the beautiful doctrine of the Word germ- 
inally present in every man, there was little originality in 
Justin's theological ideas. In exegesis he is subtle, 
and sometimes puerile ; in argument he flags, but 
where his heart speaks, he stands forth in all his moral 
greatness, and his earnest, generous words, are ever 
quick and telling. Had he remained a pagan he would 
have lived unnoted in erudite mediocrity. Christianity 
fired and fertilised his genius, and it is the glowing 
soul which we chiefly love to trace in all his writings. t 

* Ruinart, "Acta Martyrum Sincera." The details of the 
narrative correspond with all that is known of Justin. 

t Many authentic writings of Justin's have been lost. We cite the 
following- 1st, his book " Onall Heresies ;" 2nd, "On Marcion" (Ire- 
nseus/'Contra Hseres./'IV.xiv.); 3rd,' i Ht l oi ^ V XVQ;" 4th, u ASermon to 
the Greeks/'and a book, the subject of which is unintelligible, entitled 
" "*a\7?7£ " (Eusebius " H. E.," III. xviii.) The authentic writings 
which have been preserved, are : 1st, the two "Apologies ;" 2nd, 



252 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

While Justin Martyr represented the speculative 
tendencies of the Eastern Church in their period of 
formation, Irenaeus occupies an intermediate position 
between the East and West, and in a manner unites the 
two. Born in Asia Minor in the year 140, he passed 
the greater part of his life in Central Gaul. He writes 
in Greek, and thinks often like a Roman. Essentially 
moderate in his mode of thought, he tones down, so as 
to conciliate them, tendencies which seemed directly 
opposed. An earnest apostle of ecclesiastical unity, he 
laboured effectually to realise his idea, by drawing together 
lines which had hitherto seemed divergent, and fusing as 
it were into one comprehensive system of doctrine, all 
the main elements of the Christian thought of his day. 
Hence the large influence which he exercised during 
his life, and which only went on increasing after his 
death. Irenaeus was equally removed from the specu- 
lative boldness of many of the Fathers of the following 
age, and from the narrow and passionate realism of 
Tertullian. He was peculiarly distinguished by the 
harmony and equilibrium of his spirit. Such as he was 
as a theologian he was also as a bishop, and he showed 
as much moderation and wisdom in the direction of souls 
as in the discussion of doctrines. His calm and gentle 
piety is reflected in his writings. All these qualities, 
illuminated and idealised in the memory of the Church 

" The Dialogue with Grappho." The " Letter to Diognetes " and the 
"Aoyog irpog 'EWijvag," have been falsely attributed to him. The fun- 
damental ideas and the style of these works are unlike those of 
Justin. Cureton has discovered the name of the author of the 
Aoyog. The Aoyog 7rapaiveriKdg is in flagrant contradiction Avith 
Justin's views as to the preparatory purpose fulfilled by the ancient 
systems of philosophy. The treatise " On the Resurrection " is 
equally wanting in authenticity ; the style has a correctness and 
rhetorical effect unlike Justin. Finally, the treatise on "The Unity 
of God " is a mere compilation from heathen authors. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 253 

by a glorious death, assured to Irenaeus an influence 
exceptionally broad and lasting. He was unanimously 
considered to be the greatest bishop of the second 
century, and the representative of the catholicity of 
the day. He contributed to strengthen the hierar- 
chical system by his love of order and of tradition, but 
the best service he rendered it was in constraining it 
to moderate its premature pretensions. 

Irenaeus passed his youth in Asia \linor, at a time 
when the memory of the apostolic age was still vivid. 
His master was Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, and 
their intercourse, as he himself tells us in a passage 
we have already quoted,* left a deep impression upon 
Irenaeus. He was never weary of listening to the words 
of the beloved disciple, as they were recalled by the 
pious Bishop of Smyrna. We find also, from various 
allusions in his book, " Contra Haeres.," that he was 
brought into contact with several men of the generation 
which had seen and listened to the apostles. Thus, 
treading a soil watered and fertilised by the tears and 
travail of the first witnesses of the truth, living in the 
midst of the Churches founded by them, close to the 
very cradle of Christianity, listening to the narratives 
of Polycarp with the glowing imagination of youth and 
the tender emotion of a loving heart, the glorious past 
became to the young Irenaeus a living reality, which he 
beheld through the medium of his own impressions. A 
man thus filled with a great enthusiasm could not be 
a critic ; he became the eager recipient of all tradition. 
Thus, while he merits the highest confidence as a 
disciple of Polycarp, it must be admitted that on minor 
points, he is sometimes the echo of a tradition already 
more or less legendary. But the most important result 
* Eusebius, "H. E.," V. xx. 



254 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of these days, passed under such happy auspices in 
Smyrna, was an exaggerated estimate formed in the mind 
of Irenaeus, of oral tradition, to which he was disposed 
to attach sovereign authority in the Church. He raised 
to the height of a universal rule the favoured experiences 
of his own youth, forgetting that Christians would not 
always be able to sit at the feet of a disciple of John, 
and that as the distance widened between the stream of 
tradition and its source, its waters would become less 
and less pure. It is evident from the writings of 
Irenaeus that he did not confine himself to gathering 
up the memories of the Church, but that he also studied 
carefully the old pagan literature. For such studies 
he was very favourably placed, for the higher culture 
of Greece had, next to Alexandria, no more brilliant 
school than in the cities of Asia Minor. Subsequently 
Irenaeus turned his vast knowledge to account in his 
controversy with Gnosticism, the obscure beginnings of 
which in his own country he was able to trace. He 
was still young when he came into Gaul. In order 
to account for this journey, it is not necessary to 
suppose, as Gregory of Tours has done, an official 
commission given by Polycarp to Irenaeus.* The bond 
between the various Churches was very close, and 
especially so between Gaul and Asia Minor, through 
the relations of commerce. Irenaeus, immediately on 
his arrival at Lyons; was made one of the elders of the 
Church of that city, and became, in fact, through the 
confidence placed in him by the old Bishop Pothinus, 
its director and head. The times were searching : 
persecution was raging w r ith extraordinary fury, and the 
East had not only sent into Gaul some strong Christians 
like Irenaeus, it had also sent heretics, who were the 
* Gregory ox Tours, " Hist. Franc," Vol. I. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 255 

more dangerous that they were scarcely suspected, and 
might catch the Gauls unawares in the simplicity 
of their faith. Irenaeus, under these circumstances, 
exerted a most happy influence. We have a striking 
proof of the confidence which he inspired, in the 
letter of which the Church of Lyons made him the 
bearer to Rome. They wrote to the Bishop of that 
city : " We have prayed our brother and colleague 
Irenaeus to bear to thee these letters. We commend 
him to thee as a devoted servant of the testament of 
Christ."* 

The journey undertaken by Irenaeus had a twofold 
object. He was first to appeal to the sympathy of the 
Christians on behalf of the much-suffering mart} T rs of 
Lyons, and next to convey and uphold their opinion on one 
of the questions then most deeply agitating the Church. t 
This was the heresy of Montanus, who had gained 
many adherents at Lyons as in Italy. The Montanists 
had not as yet broken with the orthodox Church, and 
meanwhile they were calling forth hot discussions 
among the Christians. It seems that at Rome the 
Church was fluctuating between fatal compliance and 
futile severity. The Christians of Lyons desired to 
make known their decided opinion to the Bishop, who, 
according to Tertullian, had fallen to some extent under 
the influence of Montanism4 Their counsel seems to 
have been both wise and moderate, and no more fit 
messenger could have been found to convey it than 
Irenaeus, the apostle of conciliation, who had, so to 



* 7jT]\u)Tr]v bv-a rfjg diadrjKrjg tov Xpiarov . (Eusebius, "H. E.," V. iv.) 
| St. Jerome ("De Viris Ilhistr.," xxxv ) thus explains the 

journey of Irenseus : " Ob quasdam Ecclesias questiones legatus 

Romam missus est." 

\ Tertullian, " Adv. Praxeam," i. 



256 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

speak, beheld the very birth of Montanism.* We do 
not know precisely what was the result of his mission. 
It is certain, however, that he fulfilled it with much zeal. 
The Church of Rome was a very important one in the 
view of Irenaeus, not as the centre of a hierarchy which 
had in truth no existence, but as an apostolic Church 
and the focus of primitive tradition in the West.t It 
was of the first moment to Irenaeus, viewing tradition 
as he did, that there should be no extinction or obscura- 
tion of a light, designed to enlighten a multitude of 
Churches, which could not have recourse to the other 
centres of apostolic teaching, since these were all in 
the East. His sojourn at Rome was not without in- 
fluence on his own mental development. His circle 
of ideas and of experience widened; he became better 
acquainted with various heresies, which he met with in 
the metropolis of the empire. Probably also his love 
of tradition strengthened, as it fed on all the me- 
morials, more or less authentic, treasured up of the 
great apostles who had preached in Rome. 

When he returned to Lyons, the aged Bishop Pothinus 
was dead, and the Church itself was decimated by per- 
secution. A firm hand was needed to steer the vessel 
through the terrible storm still muttering thunder. 
Irenaeus had already been designated for the bishopric, 

* See the whole account given by Eusebius of this mission 
("H. E.,' J V. iii. iv). He thus characterises the letter of the 
Christians of Lyons : EvXafii) kui opOoco^oTdrrjv. This letter was 
therefore at once benevolent and orthodox, which leads us to sup- 
pose that he sought to deprecate on the one hand extreme severity, 
and on the other, sinful connivance at heresy in the Church or 
Rome. 

-f- A careful perusal of the famous passage on the " Principalitas " 
of the Roman Church ("Contra Haeres," III. iii.) will suffice to show 
that Irenaeus had no other idea than that 01 cherishing the work and 
memory of the Apostles. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 257 

and he accepted it with joy in the day of danger. To 
do so, was to prepare himself for martyrdom. After the 
fearful persecution under Marcus Aurelius, some respite 
was granted to the Church, and it reaped the glorious 
fruits of the bloody seed-sowing of the previous years. 
A crowd of neophytes thronged to its gates. According 
to Gregory of Tours, Irenseus carried the Gospel to the 
greater part of the inhabitants of Lyons.* These days 
of tranquillity were not all gain to the truth. Heresy, 
too, was busy in the work of perversion. The facility 
of communication between Gaul and Asia Minor, 
had led to Lyons some of those ialse teachers who 
were the crafty ministers of error, and who crept 
unawares into the Church. Irenasus has given us a 
striking picture of them. He shows us the heretics 
insinuating themselves into families, and, under a mask 
of orthodoxy, using all means to subvert the faith, 
gaining an influence over the susceptible minds o 
some, and flattering the pride of all. Similar attempts 
at perversion were made at this time through the 
entire Church. The pious bishop sought to oppose 
error by unmasking it, and in the year 180 he wrote 
his book " Against Heresies," to which we shall have 
to make constant reference, when we come to our ex- 
position of orthodox doctrine in the second century.t 
For the present; we shall only give an outline o^ its 
general character. Written in a bold and simple style, 
this book faithfully reflects the soul of Irenasus. It 

* Gregory of Tours, " Hist. Franc," I. 29. 

f The book " Contra Haeres." cannot have been written beiore the 
year 172, since mention is made in it ot Tatian (I. xxviii.) It carries 
the list of Roman bishops down to Eleutherus, and mentions the 
Montanists. The Greek text has been in great part lost ; but the 
Latin translation is very ancient, since it is certainly cited by 
Tertullian. (•' Contra Valentin.," xxxix.) 



258 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

exhibits neither the philosophic boldness of Alexandria, 
nor the fierce fervour of Carthage. The author invari- 
ably pursues that middle track, which it was his nature 
to prefer. Tradition fills a large place in this work, and 
is appealed to as the paramount rule of faith. This 
book contributed more than any other theological work 
of the times, to establish the ecclesiastical authority, 
not upon a monarchical basis such as it subsequently 
received, but upon the principles of a sort of episcopal 
aristocracy. Irenseus displays throughout his unfailing 
moderation ; he discusses rather than condemns ; he 
does not thunder anathemas on every page, as is too 
commonly done by the champions of orthodoxy. We 
feel that while he holds error in hearty detestation, 
he is full of compassion for the heretics. He expresses 
this pity very nobly in the following passage : " If we 
publish their errors, they themselves confirm them, 
teach them, and boast of them. We, for our part, 
entreat them not to remain longer in the ditch they 
have made for themselves with their own hands, and to 
forsake those shades of darkness, so that, coming into 
the Church of God, they may be born to the true life; 
that Jesus Christ may be formed in them, and that they 
may know the Creator and Governor of the universe, 
the only true God and Lord over all. This is our desire 
for them, and we love them better "than they love 
themselves. The love we bear to them is sincere, and 
it will be well for them if they respond to it, for it is 
like a bitter medicine designed to cleanse and heal. 
Therefore, while multiplying our efforts for their con- 
version, we never cease to hold out to them friendly 
hands."* 

* " Haec precamur de illis, utilius eos diligentes, quam ipsa semet 
ipsos putant diligeri. Manum porrigere eis non taedebit nos." 
(Irenaeus, " Contra Haeres.," III. xlvi.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 259 

The plan of the great work of Irenaeus, which is 
divided into five books, is very simple. The author 
himself indicates, in the preface to his third book, the 
plan of the first three. He commences by describing 
the proceedings of the heretics, then he gives a complete 
exposition of their doctrines and of their life. The 
second book is a detailed refutation of their errors ; 
the third resumes the refutation from a Scriptural 
point of view, by quotations of the sacred text. The 
two last books refer especially to the words 01 Christ 
and of the Apostles. Happy age in which, instead of 
seeking to repress heresy by proscription and violence, 
the Church combated it with the lawful weapons 
of earnest and thoughtful discussion ! The letter to 
the heretic Florinus, preserved to us by Eusebius, and 
containing the precious fragment about Polycarp, is 
written from the same stand-point as the book against 
heresy.* 

If the great Bishop of Lyons showed himself a zealous 
defender of the episcopate and of tradition, he did not 
in any way recognise the primacy of one bishop over 
the rest, nor anything like the false and mechanical 
unity constituted by decrees proceeding from Rome. 
In the controversy raised about the celebration of Easter, 
he maintained, in opposition to Bishop Victor, the rights 
of Christian freedom. While approving the practice 
of the West, he strongly opposed the sentence of excom- 
munication pronounced by the Bishop of Rome upon 
the bishops of Asia Minor ; and he gained for his opinion 
the weight of a synodal decision, passed at Lyons in an 
assembly of the bishops of Gaul.t It seems that this 
step taken by Irenaeus had all the success desired, ior 
in the next century Firmilianus affirmed that peace had 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," V. xx. f See Irenaeus' letter. (Ibid., xxiv.) 



260 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

been preserved in the Church until the episcopate 
of Stephen.* This assertion proves that the troubles 
in the time of Victor had been speedily quieted. 

According to Gregory of Tours, Irenaeus suffered 
martyrdom under Severus, in the year 197. t He left 
a memory respected by all, and his influence went on 
augmenting after his death, in many respects for the 
good of the Church, but also to the detriment of her 
liberty; for he had laid down principles, which in their 
ultimate consequences would tend to establish that 
very hierarchy, the early pretensions of which he had 
so earnestly sought to keep in subjection. 

* See Cyprian, " Epist." lxxv k St. Jerome (" De Viris Illustr.," 
xxxi.) quotes other writings of Irenaeus : 1st, " Contra Gentes," 
volumen breve ; 2nd, "De Disciplina," aliud; 3rd, "Ad Martionum 
fratrem de apostolica praedicatione ;" 4th, librum, " Yanorum 
Tractatuum f 5th, " Ad Blastum de Schismate ;" 6th, " De 
ogdoade." We have already quoted the well-known fragment 
of Pfaff. f " Hist. Franc.," I. 27. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE FATHERS OF THE EASTERN CHURCH, FROM THE 
END OF THE SECOND CENTURY TO THE TIME OF 
CONSTANTINE.* 

§ I. The Ecclesiastical Writers in Asia Minor, Greece, 
and Egypt, until Origen. 

The period of great outward sufferings was also to the 
Church a time of much inward struggle. This era 
in her history is characterised by a wide extension 
of thought in all directions, a large development 
of doctrinal and ecclesiastical life. Persecutions raged 
without, heresy grew within ; perils of all kinds seemed 
to threaten at once, and problems of gravest moment 
sought, or rather demanded, solution. The Church, 
in the midst of conflict and suffering, was constrained 
to give attention to the momentous questions of doctrine 
and discipline which arose, and to organise the religious 
community, while the axe was all the time suspended 
over its head. 

It will be our task to follow through all its phases 
this process of development, from which resulted a 

* The books of reference are : the writings of the Fathers, and 
Routh's " Reliq. Sacrae," III. IV., for those whose works are 
lost; Eusebius, VI. and VII. of his history ; St. Jerome, " De 
Viris Illustrious ;" Anastasius, "Liber Pontificalis." We may 
cite also the following: "Memoires" of Lenain de Tillemont, 
IV. ; Bcehringer, " Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen." I. ; 
Hergog's "Encyclopaedia;'' and various monographs which will 
be given as they occur. 



262 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Church admirable in many respects, but very different 
from the Church as we have seen it in the apostolic 
age. For the present we shall endeavour, not so much 
to enter into the conflicts of dogma, as to sketch the 
figures of the combatants engaged, and to make them 
move and speak before us in their true characters. 
We shall defer any methodical exposition of systems, 
while we try to bring into relief the man, rather 
than the theologian, in each of the Fathers of this 
period. We must ever bear in mind, that if the Church 
of this age prepared the way for the triumph of the 
hierarchy, it did not itself come under the yoke ; that 
it still enjoyed a time of true liberty, in which the unity 
of the faith laid no fetters upon diversity of opinion and 
free inquiry. There were still broad lines of distinction 
between East and West, and no necessity was felt for 
effacing these distinctions, or enforcing the adoption 
of one uniform symbol of the faith. Full scope was 
given for the various individualities, which found bold 
and broad expression within the Church. External 
restraint only tends to add force to that reaction of 
thought and feeling, which is the sublime vindication 
of the liberty of the soul under any despotism whatsoever. 
The martyr-theologians of the third century are not the 
faded copies of one and the same doctrinal type, forcibly 
impressed upon the mind by a mechanical process. 
All acknowledging with equal reverence the authority 
of the Divine Master, they have no hesitation in pre- 
serving intact the independence of Christian thought; 
they move at liberty within a broad area of doctrine, 
from which nothing is excluded but avowed heresy. 

We need not marvel that in the midst of the perils 
of persecution, and the countless claims of missionary 
life, they should have displayed so great intellectual 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 263 

activity. That activity gathers strength from that which 
seems to restrain it : it is stimulated alike by the noble 
endurance which elevates the moral being, by the vile 
calumnies which a blameless life must repudiate, and 
by the subtleties of heresy which its true genius must 
unmask. The sophists, who seek to live by their doc- 
trine, succumb in the hour of trial; the same principle 
holds good of the apostles of the truth; and they are 
never so full of the spirit of inspiration as when they 
are ready to die for the truth. In the dungeon and 
at the stake, Christian thought found wings for its 
highest flight. 

The most active centre of Christianity at this period, 
must not be sought in the countries where it was 
cradled. There it became consolidated and externally 
developed, as we have shown, but the predominant 
influence was exerted elsewhere. From the great cities 
of Alexandria, Rome, and Carthage, proceeds the ruling 
spirit of the Church ; and if Csesarea sheds forth a brief 
but brilliant gleam, it is indebted for it to the presence 
of Origen, the great exile of the Egyptian Church. 
Asia Minor supplies only a few names of distinction, 
and these are lustreless compared with those which 
illuminate the Churches of Africa and Italy. The 
question of the right date for the celebration of Easter, 
sufficed for a long time to occupy the minds of these 
bishops, who had neither the speculative genius of 
Alexandria, nor the aptitude for command of the Roman 
Church. The See of Jerusalem was filled, at the close 
of the second and commencement of the third centuries, 
by Narcissus, a man of austere piety, verging on asceti- 
cism. Vilely slandered by treacherous enemies, he gave 
no reply but silence, and during long years withdrew 
himself into the desert. A legend, which must be of 



264 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

great antiquity, since Eusebius repeats it, ascribes to 
him numerous miracles, but they so closely resemble 
those of the apocryphal gospels, that we can only hold 
them to be also apocryphal. The long retirement of 
a man placed at the head of one of the most important 
Churches, would no doubt impress the imagination of 
the Christian community, and we know that no soil has 
been more fertile in myth and legend than the sand 
of the deserts, in which pious solitaries sought a refuge 
from the world and sin.* When more than a hundred 
years old, Narcissus returned to Jerusalem, and joined 
Alexander to himself in the episcopate. Alexander had 
been for a long time the director of a Church in Cappa- 
docia, and had come to Palestine to visit the holy places. 
The two bishops were led to the step thus taken by 
a two-fold revelation.! Alexander wrote several letters 
to his colleagues in the episcopate. He had with him, 
for some time, Clement of Alexandria, and the esteem 
in which he held him, showed that he was a man of 
breadth and generous spirit.} He was cast into prison 
in the persecution under Decius, and died the death 
of the confessors. § The Church of Caesarea, which 
was to claim the honour of receiving the exiled Origen 
and his school, was directed under Severus by the 
Bishop Theophilus, who took a leading part in the 
discussion of the Easter question, and exercised a 
great influence in the synod held in reference to it.|| 
Antioch, one of the metropolitan Churches of Asia, 
had at its head, at the close of the reign of Commo- 
dus and the commencement of that of Severus, the 
Bishop Serapion, who distinguished himself by his 

* Eusebius, ';H.E./' VI. x. 

f Kara airoicaXvxpiv vvKTiop. (Ibid., xi.) J Ibid. 

§ St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," lxii. || Ibid., xliii. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 265 

numerous writings directed against Montanism and 
Judaism.* 

The Greek Church does not appear to have taken 
any place of importance during this period. It had 
neither great bishops nor illustrious teachers. Athens 
was totally eclipsed by Alexandria. The Church of 
Corinth, which had once shown itself so easily agitated 
by troubles revealing a strong though often ill-directed 
life, was in a state of such complete repose that history 
passes it by in silence. One only of its bishops was 
an exception to the general obscurity — Bacchylus, 
who lived in the time of Severus, and who was held 
in high veneration by his Achaian colleagues. He wrote 
on the Easter question. t We shall confine ourselves 
to enumerating the names of those teachers or bishops, 
whose works are known either by their titles or by some 
extant fragments. Heraclitus, who, in the time of 
Severus, wrote a commentary on Paul's Epistles; X 
Maximus, who discussed the question of the origin of 
evil ; Candidus and Appion, who wrote on the six days 
of creation ; § Sextus, author of a book on the resurrec- 
tion ; Arabianus, whose name alone has survived ; and 
Jude, who, in a commentary on the seventy weeks 
of Daniel, made out a complete chronology of the 
Church, from its foundation to the time of Severus, and 
proclaimed the approaching advent of Antichrist. || 
The mere titles of these works give sufficient proof 
that the minds of their authors were much occupied 
with heretical Gnosticism, and especially with the 
oriental dualism which characterised it ; for they 
recur perpetually to the great problem of the origin 

* St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," xli.; Eusebius, " H. E.," Vl.xii. 
f St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," xliv. J Ibid., xlvi. 

§ Ibid., xlvi-xlix. |J Ibid., xxxiii. 

18 



266 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of matter. It is evident, also, that whenever they are 
not stimulated by the attacks of their adversaries, their 
thoughts revert by preference to petty questions of 
chronology. 

Let us now transfer our attention to the more active 
and brilliant centre of Christian thought, in that Church 
of Alexandria, of which we have more than once spoken 
already, but with which we must cultivate a more 
intimate acquaintance in the person of its most illus- 
trious representatives. We have seen how, long before 
the time of Christ, the metropolis of Egypt had outrun 
the city of Plato, Sophocles, and Phidias. But it is to 
the glory of Athens, that it could no longer govern the 
world after it had become itself enslaved, and that it 
lost, with its independence, the afflatus of high art, 
the inspiration which produced its greatest works. 
Alexandria, more learned and more subtle, never rose 
to the heights of sublime poetry or manly eloquence, but 
it gathered together and fused all the elements of the 
old world, and created, in its own manner, a sort of 
universalism, vague rather than broad, in which the 
religions of East and West were alike deprived of their 
exclusive character, Judaism itself being made to enter 
into alliance with the polytheistic religions which it 
had so long proscribed. Born of this heterogeneous 
union, the Alexandrine mind rose above all national 
divergences; but it also rose above reality, above history, 
to the cloudy summits of speculation, and it was utterly 
wanting in the historic sense. Strong in its allegorical 
method, it sported with facts ; and its philosophical 
theories were at once aspiring and unsubstantial. 
Attaching great significance to symbols, it gave primary 
importance to that first and greatest of symbols — 
human speech. It developed an elaborate science of 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 267 

language, in which the schoolman's devotion to 
minutiae was combined with the subtle imagination 
of the mythologist. With these tendencies, it was 
naturally predisposed to Gnosticism, and the most 
fervent faith of the Christians of this school, bears 
the impress alike of its virtues and its defects. 

Alexandria was essentially the home of letters. Men 
lived there for science only. At the commencement 
of the Christian era, it possessed two splendid scientific 
institutions, which cast into the shade both temples and 
palaces. These were the Museum and the Serapeum. 
The former had been instituted by the Ptolemies in 
the western quarter of the city. It was surrounded 
with porticoes and pleasure-gardens, and contained 
an extensive library and a hall for public debates. The 
Serapeum vied with the Museum in beauty of archi- 
tecture and in the number of its valuable manuscripts. 
Such institutions do not create the scientific spirit, but 
they favour and foster it where it already exists. Persons 
from all points of the empire resorted to Alexandria 
to visit them. There the Greek or Roman philosopher, 
wrapped in the mantle which was his official garb, 
encountered the Asiatic ascetic or the Jewish rabbi.* 
The Christian Church made many conquests among 
all these philosophers, gathered at Alexandria out of 
curiosity or from the prevailing restlessness of the age. 
These proselytes had intellectual needs to be satisfied, 
and errors to be removed. Christianity, which is to 
be all things to all men, proved itself as well able 
to rise to the height of these refined and agitated 
spirits, as to stoop to the comprehension of slaves 
and of children. It was equally adapted to reach the 
two extremes of human intellect — wise among the wise, 
* Redepenning, " Origen," I. 10, 11, 



268 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

simple among the simple, divine ever. The Church 
instituted in the brilliant capital of Egypt, a school of 
Christian philosophy, which could well bear comparison, 
in depth and in science, with the other schools, while 
it surpassed all in the possession of the truth. It is 
known under the name of the School of the Catechists. 
In order to form a just conception of it, we must set 
aside all notions of a fixed and invariable organisation. 
No such regular and systematic course of religious in- 
struction was given at Alexandria, as is common in the 
Church of our own day. The catechumens of the early 
ages were carefully instructed ; but the original text 
of the constitution of the Church at Alexandria, shows 
us that the primary instruction given was very simple, 
and bore mainly on the fundamental points of the faith. 
The School of the Catechists no doubt had its origin in 
the instruction of the catechumens, but its curriculum 
was subsequently much enlarged, and it embraced 
among its disciples a large number of Christians already 
baptised, and even some pagans. It became a veritable 
school of Christian philosophy and theology, or in our 
modern phraseology, it had a chair of divinity. It was 
not indeed accompanied with much outward show. 
The public and formal teaching of philosophy was not 
a part of the old traditional method. Its most illustrious 
masters in Greece had been content with free dis- 
cussions, and its two most famous schools had derived 
their names from these familiar practices. The name 
of the Academy recalled the gardens of Arademus, 
where the divine Plato had delivered his doctrine, and 
the Peripatetic school gloried in preserving in this, its 
habitual designation, the memory of the walks of 
Aristotle with his disciples. Teaching thus informally 
delivered, carried all the more authority; grand declama- 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 269 

tions and solemn dissertations commenced with the 
decline of philosophy. The first Christians remained 
faithful to ancient customs. The teaching of Christ 
was even more bold in its simplicity and in the absence 
of official form, than that of Socrates. It was fitting 
that a living truth like Christianity, the power of which 
lies in the strength of conviction with which it is 
received, should be communicated from soul to soul. 
The best school of theology was the house of a true 
Christian. Thus the faith of Polycarp was formed 
at the feet of St. John, and that of Irenseus at the feet 
of Polycarp. Justin Martyr, the Christian philosopher, 
gathered around him a group of attentive disciples 
wherever he went. The School of the Catechists at 
Alexandria rested upon precisely the same foundations. 
It did not assemble in any large building; it was not 
connected with worship, nor presided over by a bishop. 
Founded by laymen, it differed in no outward circum- 
stance from the ancient schools of the philosophers. 
Although it was recognised by the regular authorities 
of the Church, and although the catechists were named 
by its early pastors, it was free to assemble at any 
hour of the day in the house of the Christian teacher.* 
Thither resorted both men and women, and the teaching 
which, beside the study of the Scriptures, embraced 
uninspired literature and even the exposition of the 
various systems of ancient philosophy, was adapted 
to the culture of all the learners. The work was 
essentially one of faith and devotedness ; there was 
no payment. t 

Three great teachers of unequal merit gave impor- 

* Eusebius (" H. E.," VI. iii.) shows us the disciples of Origen 
assembled in his house. 

f Redepenning, " Origen," I. 59-69. 



270 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tance and influence to the Church of Alexandria : 
Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen successively reflected 
lustre upon it. Pantsenus, probably a native of Greece,* 
early embraced the philosophy of the Portico ; then, 
yielding to the influences of the time, he became 
a disciple of the Pythagorean philosophy, or rather, 
of the eclectic theosophy, then in so great favour. t 
We have no particulars of his conversion. It is known 
only that as soon as he was won to the Gospel, he 
devoted himself entirely to its service, turning to ac- 
count, for its diffusion and defence, all the knowledge 
which he had acquired as a master in the schools of 
philosophy. 

At Alexandria, to which he repaired in the year 180, 
he found scope for his great powers. There his rich 
stores of learning were sure to meet with due appre- 
ciation. He was the true founder of the School of the 
Catechists ; he raised it to the height at which it was 
maintained by his successors ; and he appears to have 
been the first to conceive in all its breadth the plan 
of the Alexandrine apology, so admirably carried out 
by Clement and Origen. J There is evidence of true 
genius, as well as of a noble largeness of heart, in his 
views of the providential design to be answered by the 
high culture of Greece. He prepared the way for a 
truly philosophical and Christian survey of the history 
of humanity. He discerned with more clearness than 

* Testimonies differ on this point. It has been asserted that 
Pantaenus was born in Sicily, because Clement compares him to 
the bee of Sicily ; but this is straining a metaphor. (Clement, 
"Strom.," I. i. § II.) 

t Eusebius, "H.E.,"V. x.: "Stoicae sectae philosophus." (Jerome, 
" De Viris Ulustr.," xxxvi. Redepenning, " Origen," I. 65.) 

I Origen says positively that his teaching was modelled on 
that of Pantaenus : Mt/nrjad/xtvog rbv 777)6 r/fxtiv Uav-aivov. (Eusebius, 
"H.E.," VI. xiv.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 271 

Justin, the unity of the Divine plan under the diversity 
of nationalities and the seeming confusion of events. 
He appears to have possessed in large measure the gift 
of eloquence, for Clement, in his "Stromata," declares 
himself incapable of reproducing his teaching in its 
original beauty and elevation. " I know," he says 
humbly, when speaking of the " Stromata," "what is 
the weakness of these reflections, if I compare them 
with the gifted and gracious teaching I was privileged 
to hear."* Science, as understood by Pantaenus, so 
far from petrifying the heart, quickened it into holy 
ardour. *We see this illustrious teacher himself carrying 
the Gospel into the far East, thus preparing himself by 
a missionary life for his theological course, or perhaps 
breaking off such a course to go and proclaim the name 
of Christ to barbarous tribes, to whom it was but 
partially known. t Happy is the age in which scientific 
theology is not severed from active and militant piety, 
in which a man gave his whole self to the cause, 
and heroically carried into practice that which he elo- 
quently taught in theory ! We know that Pantaenus 
found the Aramaic gospel of Matthew in the distant 
country to which he went. Some commentaries on the 
Scriptures, written by him, were for a time extant, 
which opened the way for the allegorical interpreters.' 

* To 7rv£vfx.a sKtlvo to KsxapiTOj/xsvov. (Clement, " Strom.," I. 
i. § 14.) Clement speaks again of the luminous and loving 
language of his masters, among whom Pantaenus was chief. 
(Ibid., § ii ) " Magis viva voce Ecclesiis profuit," says Jerome 
(" De Viris Illustr.," xxxvi.), speaking of the same teacher. 

+ It is difficult to determine precisely the date of this mission. 
Jerome (" De Viris Illustr.," xxxvi.) asserts that Pantaenus was 
sent on his mission by the Bishop Demetrius, which would bring 
the date down beyond the year 190. On the other hand, Eusebius 
conveys the idea that he died a catechist. (Eusebius, " H. E.," 
VI. x.) We are free to suppose a temporary interruotion oi his 
teaching. 



272 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Of these commentaries we possess only scattered frag- 
ments.* But he left behind him something better than 
his writings ; he left a disciple, who was destined to 
surpass the master, while carrying on his work. 

Titus Flavius Clement of Alexandria, thus known 
because of the great reputation gained by his teaching 
in the capital of Egypt, was probably of Greek extrac- 
tion, t Born in the midst of paganism, he spent his 
youth, like so many other distinguished spirits of his 
day, in active and ardent researches after truth. He 
travelled far and wide, and never paused in his 
passionate pursuit till, in his own words, *he found 
rest in the bosom of the Word of the eternal truth. 
Deeming nothing worthy of note which did not bear 
upon the great purpose of his soul, he enters into no 
details of his outward life. He visited the most brilliant 
cities of the ancient world ; he travelled both in Asia 
and Africa, but he has given no account of these coun- 
tries, nor of his adventures. He has kept a record of 
one journey only — his soul's journey through the various 
systems of religion and philosophy. This alone is of 
interest to him. His writings show what a wealth of 
information he acquired in this period of his life. Poets 
and philosophers became equally familiar to him, and 
he lifted the veil of all the mysteries of religion. He 
tells us that he had the opportunity of hearing many 
eminent representatives of Christianity in Italy, Greece, 
and Asia.J: Pantaenus, to whom he plainly alludes, was 
the teacher who exercised the most decisive influence 
over him, He says : " After hearing his teaching, I 

* Routh, '<Reliq. Sacrse," I. 380,381. 

f See Jerome on Clement ("De Viris Illustr.," xxxviii. iii. ; 
Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xiii. ; Redepenning, " Origen," I. 73). 
We shall refer principally to these works. 

I "Strom.," I.i. § 11. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 273 

fixed my abode in Egypt." Like the bee of Sicily, 
he sought out in the field of the Scriptures, the sweet 
flowers of the word of prophets and apostles, and 
distilled pure knowledge into the souls of his hearers.* 
Pantsenus, by his learning, his large-heartedness, and 
his piety, could not fail to fascinate a mind like 
Clement's. The disciple already attracted to Chris- 
tianity, possibly even already thoroughly converted to 
it, had not abjured the noble passion of his youth — 
the love of the great philosophy of his country. He 
could not repudiate this on the same grounds as 
the pagan superstitions, which it had secretly under- 
mined. It must have been a lively joy to Clement to 
learn from his new master, that these noble systems 
of philosophy need not be treated as idols to be broken 
without mercy, but that they might in a measure be 
made to serve the cause of Christ ; that the wisdom of 
Greece, like the Eastern magi, brought in fact its best 
treasures and laid them as an offering at the Redeemer's 
feet. Like the sun rising upon a country lying in 
darkness, this grand idea dawned upon the mind of the 
young Christian philosopher, and illuminated all his 
'treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He felt that he 
need not renounce the pursuit of science ; he grasped 
in its deep meaning the apostolic saying, that every 
thought might be brought into captivity to the obedience 
of Christ ; and, moved with holy jealousy, he set forth 
to conquer for his Captain the various realms of the 
human mind, showing no connivance with error and 
evil, but distinguishing with holy joy the precious 
pearls, buried in the foul dung-heap of paganism. 
Ancient religions and ancient philosophies he con- 

* [IpucprjTiicou rs Kai d.7ro<JTo\iicoi' Xhjauivoq rd iivQr} do£7rouevog. 
("Strom.," Li. § 11.) 



274 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

vStrained to give evidence against themselves in favour 
of the truth, alike by their purest aspirations and by 
their shortcomings and blemishes. Following Pantaenus 
in the office of catechist, Clement expounded, with 
equal felicity and boldness, the principles from which 
he started. His writings may be regarded as the 
faithful exponent of his teaching. They exhibit, first of 
all, the noble spirit which animated all his scientific 
activity. He urges that every teacher of the truth 
should ask himself scrupulously" if he is pure from 
presumption, from the spirit of rivalry, if he is seeking 
not his own glory, nor any other recompense than the 
salvation of them that hear him."* Elsewhere he says 
yet more emphatically, that he who ventures to teach 
truth by his writings, has pledged himself before God, 
to trample under foot every selfish and mercenary con- 
sideration, and to contemn alike praise and payment. 
" He must needs become an imitator of the Lord. He 
will fulfil the will of God when he gives freely that 
which freely he has received, regarding himself as 
sufficiently repaid by his high career. t The price of 
prostitution may not be carried into the sanctuary." 
Again he says : " Blessed are the peacemakers ; 
blessed they who by their teaching bring back into 
the path of peace, to the living Word, travellers 
who through ignorance have gone astray in the midst 
of life, and who are hungering and thirsting after 
righteousness." X Could such wanderers find a 
better guide than Clement, a man who, having 
himself long taken toilsome steps on the wrong road, 

* Ei tovtov /.iovov KapTrovrai rov fiiodov, rr\v croj-rjpiav twv t.irdi6vT0Jv. 
(" Strom., 1 ' I. i. § 6.) \ Ibid., § 9. 

X Matcapioi 01 tipi]voTroioi, 01 tovq ivravQa Kara rov (iibv nai rrjv 
ir\avr)v irpbg rrjg dyvoiag TroXijxovfxtvovQ /xeraSidaffKOvreg Kai fitTayovrtg 

fir f<nr)-vnv- /'TT~)id.^ 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 275 

could speak with fullest sympathy to his old companions 
on the way ? 

This lofty disinterestedness, by which Clement was 
distinguished above all the hired masters of his time, 
gave to his teaching not only a higher moral power, 
but also a superiority in method. The best means of 
becoming all things to all men is to love all. Love 
never fails to find the way to the heart, and no clair- 
voyance of the mind , can be compared with that 
of the heart, for discovering the points of contact 
between various individuals and the truth. Clement 
himself tells us with what care he endeavoured to adapt 
his teaching to the moral and intellectual condition of 
his hearers. He says: "He who "devotes himself to 
oral teaching, founds the judgment he forms of his 
disciples upon experience and reflection. His eye 
fixes* the disciple who is able to comprehend. He 
carefully notes the language of his hearers, their 
character, their manners and coaduct, their mood of 
mind, their outward deportment, even the sound of 
their voice, that he may discern between the wayside, 
the stony ground, the trodden path, and the fertile soil 
— the good ground which, well prepared and ready for 
the seed, will bring forth a hundred-fold."* 

We feel that Clement of Alexandria appreciated in 
all its dignity the priesthood of teaching. He reveals 
the great thought which moved him, when he says, 
taking up the same image of spiritual husbandry, that 
just as the earth is made soft with showers before 
the seed-time, so he waters the soil which he is to 
cultivate, with all that is good and true in the writ- 
ings of the Greeks. t He makes use of the Hellenic 

* " Strom.," I. i. § 8. 

\ KaOdwep oi ysujpyoi TrpoapfcvoavrEQ rrjv yrjv. (Ibid., § 1 7.) 



2j6 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

philosophy as a preparation for revelation ; he recog- 
nises in it a divine idea encompassed with falsity and 
error. " These tiny pearls," he says, " gathered from 
the ancient philosophies, and purified from their foul 
alloy, only enhance by contrast the preciousness of 
the pearl of great price."* 

If without now entering upon any exposition of 
Clement's doctrine, we seek to characterise his teach- 
ing, it will appear to us inexhaustibly varied, rich, 
and original in form. Clement rejects all rhetorical 
ornament ; he scorns that effeminate beauty of language, 
which marks the decline of true literature. " For 
myself," he says, " I am well assured that the matter 
of moment is to live by the Word, and to enter into His 
spirit ; and I give myself no concern about beauty 
of words, only about the beauty of truth. The one 
thing needful is to labour to save those who desire 
salvation, not to make an array of phrases, like the 
ornaments of a woman. Words are as the vesture 
which clothes the body ; the things expressed by words 
are the flesh and the nerves. We must not be so 
concerned about the raiment as about the welfare of 
the body."t Clement then adduces the true saying 
of Pythagoras, that the muses must be preferred to the 
syrens. J He is anxious that truth should not be 
bedecked and bedizened like a courtesan, but clothed 
in the simple and chaste beauty which is her fitting 
garb. He says, we must eschew in our words all 
elaborate and vain ornaments, as the Spartans pro- 
scribed perfumes and purple robes. Seasoning is not 

* " Strom.," I. i. § 16. 

t SwOrjvctL yap tv old' on mi ovvapaoQai toTq aw^eaOai yXixofisvoig 
fikXriOTov kaTLV, ovxi GvvGeivai ra, \t%eicia KaQairsp to. Koafxia. (Ibid., 

J Movaag Seiprjvwv, yiiovg r)yi7<r0ai. (Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 277 

nourishment ; a discourse which aims rather to please 
than to instruct, is an ill-prepared repast. " Let us 
beware," he says again, "of making broad our phy- 
lacteries in the love of vain-glory. To the truly wise, 
one disciple is enough."* 

Though thus rejecting all superfluous ornament, 
Clement writes in a style both animated and brilliant. 
He has not the great, grand eloquence of the classic 
ages, and in spite of his very earnest endeavour, oicen 
fails to be simple. He has not the creative imagination 
which spontaneously produces sublime symbols. He 
has rather an erudite imagination, and borrows the 
striking images, with which his writings abound, more 
often from the large stores of his learning than from 
the book of nature. Profoundly versed in the religious 
and philosophical systems and literary treasures of 
antiquity, he perpetually strikes bright flashes of light 
from the rapid contact of ideas, myths, and poetical utter- 
ances, which cross and combine in the current of his 
thoughts. He lives much more in this artificial world, 
created by an advanced civilisation, than in the outer 
world, the fresh beauties of which entrance young or re- 
juvenated nations, and live again in their language and 
in the best days of their poetry. The metaphorical 
style of Clement is a complicated tissue of allusions, 
borrowed from the old philosophical and poetical 
traditions of mankind. In this aspect he is thoroughly 
Alexandrian, but he stands wholly apart from the pagan 
philosophers of his age, in the fervour which glows 
through all his erudition. If the statue is composed of 
divers metals, it is not the less an animated statue. All 
the various elements which he holds in combination, 
are fused in the fire of his own ardent conviction, 
* " Strom.," I. x. § 48. 



2jti THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and whether he speaks of Orpheus or of Pythagoras, 
whether he quotes Homer or Plato, he is ever the 
faithful worshipper of the Eternal Word. His style, in 
its wealth and diversity, is only the reproduction of the 
wealth and variety of his thought. This very abundance 
and erudition render him sometimes obscure ; and this 
obscurity is not unwelcome to him, since it hides from 
the gaze of the vulgar, mysteries which they could not 
comprehend. He desires to admit them only to the 
threshold of the temple, the inner sanctuary of which 
they would defile by their presence, and he thinks thus 
to secure the advantages of esoteric teaching, without 
avowing its principle, which in its aristocratic ex- 
clusiveness is so opposed to the Gospel. He sought, to 
use his own words, to half conceal while he revealed, 
to veil the highest mysteries of truth while he disclosed 
them, and to point to them in silence.* He desired 
that his disciples should put forth vigorous efforts 
to master the truth. He would that they should, as 
it were, walk up and down within the enclosure of 
his teaching, as in a well-planted garden, but that if 
they should find themselves therein as in a waste 
and untilled place, they should search for the truth 
by the sweat of their brow, or as men seek for a rose 
among thorns. t 

The writings of Clement, which have come down 
to us, sufficiently indicate the subjects to which 
his teaching was directed. The " Exhortation to the 
Gentiles " is a treatise purely apologetic, in which 
he endeavours to show that faith in the Word is the 
end of all earnest researches after truth, as well as 
the response to all the unquiet yearnings of the 
heart, if only the heart be purged from the pollutions 
* " Strom.," I. i. § 15. f Ibid., ii. § 21. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 279 

of pagan life. The " Pedagogue " is an admirable 
moral treatise, in which the ideal of the true Christian 
is traced in all its features, the soft and the stern, with- 
out any colouring of exaggerated asceticism. The noble 
treatise entitled, " How can a rich man be saved ?" 
belongs to the same category. The " Stromata," or 
" Tapestries," are medleys of religious philosophy. 
The author introduces his book to us as a fair and 
fertile hill-side refreshed with the dew of heaven ; it is 
covered with rich herbage and plane-trees, laurels 
and olives. It is a nursery where the trees to be 
transplanted must be carefully chosen out.* Questions 
of morals, metaphysics, and dialectics, are treated in it 
promiscuously; but Clement's true thoughts come out 
all the more clearly and vividly from this intentional 
confusion. The " Hypotyposes" (Sketches), of which 
we possess only some fragments, were conceived on 
the same plan as the " Stromata." Clement is also 
known to have written on the prophecies, and to have 
been the author of an exposition of the doctrine of 
Valentine, of treatises upon Easter, upon the rule 
of faith, upon Montanism and Judaism.t This imper- 
fect catalogue of his writings, shows that all the 
questions of the day came under his notice. The 
breadth of his spirit made him more than one enemy. 
He mentions in his works one narrow-minded and 
obtuse individual, who took alarm at his boldness, and 
who was especially indignant that he should seek any 
support for the Gospel in Greek philosophy. "I know," 
he says, " the murmurings of certain souls, timid 
through ignorance,* who assert that it is necessary 

* " Strom.," VIII. xviii. §111. 

f The best edition of his writings is that of J. Potter, Oxford, 
1715. We quote Clement from the edition in v^i rir ~f ^^ 
*< TiiWiothpra Sacra." Leipsic, 1831. 



280 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to concentrate attention solely on essentials, on those 
things which relate directly to the faith, and to take no 
heed of anything beyond, since all else is vanity, and 
has neither use nor end. Some even go so far as 
to say that philosophy is an invention of the Evil One, 
wickedly suggested to man for his perdition. These 
' Stromata' will show, on the contrary, that philo- 
sophy also is a creation of the Divine Providence." 
We do not know how much Clement had to suffer from 
this narrow and intolerant party, but we do know 
that the murmurings of opposition, so far from being 
silenced by his vigorous refutal, went on rising to 
a higher pitch, till their voice was heard echoing 
abroad in a mighty anathema. This is the faction 
which drove away from Alexandria the successor of 
Clement, and the most illustrious representative of his 
school — the great Origen. 

In spite of all opposition, the teaching of Clement 
exerted a weighty influence on his age. He gathered 
around him a crowd of eager disciples, and like 
Pantaenus, had the happiness of knowing that his 
work would be continued and developed in the 
spirit in which he had commenced it. We have a 
striking proof of the consideration which he never 
ceased to enjoy, in the fact that, notwithstanding 
the opposition of his enemies, he was raised to the 
post of elder, and took part in the guidance of the 
Church.t 

He thought it, nevertheless, his duty to leave 
Alexandria, when persecution burst forth afresh under 
Septimus Severus. He had always avowed moderate 

* Ov \t\rj6sv Sk fit. Kat ra OprXovpisva. 7rp6g rivwv a^aQwg \po<poSewv, 
Xprjvai XtyovTwv 7rtpi ra avayicawrara KarayivicQai, to. de t^aiOsp Kai 
TTtpiTTa vTrepfiaiviLV. (" Strom., " I. i. § 1 8.) 

t Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," xxxviii. 









BOOK II.— THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 28l 

views with regard to martyrdom. He in no way 
depreciated its value, but he did not think any man 
ought to seek it voluntarily. He held that the 
signal from God should be calmly awaited, and that, 
following the precept of Christ, men persecuted in 
one city should flee to another, if they could do so 
without being untrue to the faith. He severely blames 
that which he calls the unseemly impatience for death, 
shown by the enthusiasts who courted martyrdom. 
Their death, he says, is not martyrdom but suicide, 
and they are like the Indian gymnosophists, who kindle 
their own funeral pile.* Acting on these convictions, 
Clement, in the year 202, during the storm, of persecu-. 
tion in the East, sought an asylum with Alexander, 
Bishop of Jerusalem. He died a.d. 220, after a life in 
which he consistently realised his own type of the true 
and wise Christian, the evangelical Gnostic, whose 
portrait he delighted to draw. Severe in manners, and 
even in garb, an austere Christian without being a 
violent ascetic, of large mind and broad sympathies, 
responsive to all the pure aspirations of the human 
conscience, a devoted worshipper of the Word, in whom 
he had found the fulness of truth, yet not ashamed 
to stoop to gather out of the dust and mire any grain 
of pure gold, which he saw half buried there ; desiring 
no other wisdom than the folly of Christ apprehended 
by faith, but discerning in that folly all the treasures 
of Divine wisdom and knowledge ; at once humble 
and independent, and having at command, as the 
medium of his thoughts, language pliant and exact, 
bearing the double impress of his own character and 
the character of his age ; — such was Clement of 
Alexandria. He possessed in highest measure that 
* " Strom.," IV. iv. § 17. 
19 



282 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

essential qualification of an apologist, of being entirely 
in sympathy with his time, and yet able, by the superior 
power of Divine truth, to lead and mould it. He became 
all things to all men without concession and without 
compromise. 

§ II. Origen. 

The name which shed highest lustre on the Church 
of Alexandria was that of Origen— a name long al- 
ternating, in the judgment of history, between highest 
praise and deepest blame, now revered, now accursed, 
but great alike amidst blessing and cursing. Origen is 
one of the latest representatives of the age of faith and 
freedom. He stands on the threshold of a new era, in 
which a uniform system of theology will be imposed 
on minds the most diverse, and narrow limits will 
be set to Christian speculation. It was his misfortune 
to live in an intermediate age, when he might suppose 
that freedom of inquiry within the circle of the 
Christian faith was a consecrated right, and might 
easily ignore the fact, that a strong counter-revolution 
was in process, and was carrying with it the rising 
tide of public opinion. It is this position in which he 
was placed, which constitutes the melancholy interest, 
and prepares, as it were, the drama of his life. It was 
a position that must have been full of peril and temp- 
tation to a heart less steadfast than Origen's, since 
it would have been so easy to sink into cowardly 
submission, or be stirred up to violent reaction. Origen 
never deviated from his own straight course; he neither 
bowed under the yoke, which he felt to be an unrighteous 
one, nor shook off lawful authority. He never abdicated 
the independence which was his right, and never 
sought such independence as would have led him into 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 283 

heresy. He courageously pursued his way, turning 
neither to the right hand nor to the left, ever patient 
and undaunted, free from weakness and free from 
passion. His errors were grave, but none of them 
of such a nature as to cut him off from the common 
faith of the Church ; he should have been refuted, not 
excommunicated. His errors were in any case less 
fraught with danger, than the pretensions of his ad- 
versaries to decide by force of authority on questions 
so delicate. If he erred on such and such a particular 
point of doctrine, he yet remains, after all, the cham- 
pion of the good cause, the defender of lawful liberty, 
attainted and condemned in his person. Christian 
liberty could not have found a nobler champion, or 
have suffered in the person of a more honourable or 
worthy representative. 

Origen was born at Alexandria in the sixth year 
of the reign of Commodus, a.d. 185.* His name was 
derived from Or, or Orus, which was that of an ancient 
god of the country ; the proofs of indomitable firmness 
which he constantly gave, won for him the surname 
of " Adamantius," or the man of brass. His parents 
were Christians. t They made no more concession to 
paganism in giving their son the very common name 
of a god of the country, than we make in still calling 
the days of the week by their pagan designation. They 
enjoyed a certain competence, for his family only 

* Our principal authority is his own writings, which we 
quote from the Delarue edition. The Sixth Book of Eusebius' 
Ecclesiastical History contains a very interesting biography of 
Origen. The panegyric of Pamphylus, the farewell discourse 
of Gregory Thaumaturgus to Origen, may also be consulted. 
The best German monograph is that of Redepenning, in two 
volumes. 

f T<£> yap 'Qpiykvti ra rfjg Kara Xpiorbv didacncaXiag lie Trpoyovwv kaw&TO. 
(Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xix.) 



284 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

became poor after the confiscation of their goods, 
which followed on the imprisonment of the head of the 
house.* Leonides, the father of Origen, was a man of 
approved piety, and of a large and lofty mind, as is 
proved by his tolerance for the ardent curiosity of his 
son. The young man, endowed with a nature at once 
deep and intense, found himself placed in- the most 
favourable conditions for its development. Everything 
tended to stimulate the intellect in that brilliant city, 
rich in the collected treasures of ancient culture, and 
incessantly echoing with the subtle and learned dis- 
cussions of the philosophers. 

Origen attended the schools open to studious youths. 
The young Christians were free to resort to these 
without exciting astonishment, thanks to the tolerance 
produced by an unbounded eclecticism. The Church 
was enjoying a transitory calm, which it owed to the 
indifference to religion of the son of Marcus Aurelius. 
There was therefore no obstacle to the liberal educa- 
tion of Origen. He could study without hindrance the 
so-called encyclical or preparatory sciences, which 
included geometry, arithmetic, and grammar. But it 
was chiefly beneath the paternal roof that he found 
the food of his moral life. Leonides had a true con- 
ception of the high vocation of a Christian father. He 
regarded himself as the priest of his house, and he 
deputed to no one the charge of cultivating the mind 
and heart of his son. He read the Gospel with him, 
and made him commit a portion to memory every 
day. After the reading, they had a free talk together 
over it ; and Origen very early gave tokens of that 
eager thirst for knowledge which nothing could quench, 
and which was the ruling passion of his life. Not 

* Eusebius, " H.E.," VI. ii. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 285 

content with the first explanations given him, he pur- 
sued his investigations with a bold simplicity. He 
would not be satisfied with the literal meaning of 
the Scriptures, but was always seeking a deep and 
hidden sense.* 

His father endeavoured to keep within bounds this 
young and buoyant mind, which in its very first at- 
tempts at flight left him so far behind. He could not 
help admiring, yet he trembled at the noble daring 
of the boy, and while he sought to keep so perilous 
a power in due control, he blessed God for the gift of 
such a son.. He felt that this zeal and earnestness 
could not be attributed to mere intellectual curiosity ; 
that they must have their source in a soul penetrated 
with the love of truth. The young Origen scorned all 
that which ensnares and captivates the senses, all the 
attractions that might have charmed and led him away 
in a capital city rich and splendid as Alexandria ; he 
lived only for the unseen, and bent upon the highest 
truths and grandest mysteries, the powers of a quick 
imagination, and a deeply thoughtful mind. He thus 
gave all his faculties to Christianity in the first bloom 
of their freshness and beauty, and he inspired all who 
came in contact with him, with that tender respect, 
which is ever felt for a youth keeping himself pure in 
the midst of corruption and scepticism. More than 
once his father, bending over the boy as he lay asleep, 
would kiss his bare breast, the sanctuary (as he felt) of 
the spirit of God.t 

Origen's faith was nurtured in the Church as well 
as in the home. Christian worship at Alexandria was 

* 'Qq fit) 8' kEapic&v avrtp rag aTrXag Kcti Trpox^ipovg t&v UpoJv XoyCJv 
kvT&i'%£iQ, Ztjrtlv 8s ti Tr\kov. (Eusebius, " H.E.," VI. ii.) 
f "Qtnrep 81 9dov ttvivhcitoq 'iv8ov. (Ibid.) 



286 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

a thing of much beauty. Nowhere else were the 
public prayers so poetically rich and full, as we see 
from the liturgical documents of the time. The forms 
of adoration were grand and solemn, though also 
striking in their simplicity. It is pleasant to follow 
the young Origen in thought into those daily assemblies, 
where the Church of Alexandria, like the woman in the 
Gospel, broke over the feet of Christ a vase of very 
precious ointment, in the offering of adoring praise, 
which their full hearts poured forth in an ever-flowing, 
ever-fragrant stream. There is every reason to believe 
that Origen had been received to the Lord's Supper 
before the death of his father. That service was a deeply 
impressive one, and might well leave a track of fire in 
so susceptible a soul. 

Origen also listened at this period to the two 
illustrious catechists, his predecessors, Pantaenus and 
Clement ; * these exerted a mighty influence over him. 
He was predestined by natural disposition to be their 
most faithful disciple. He found in their teaching, that 
depth and subtlety of exposition, which met the crav- 
ings of his soul frorh childhood upwards, for other 
interpretations of Scripture than the simple commen- 
taries of his father. The attempt made by these 
illustrious teachers to harmonise science and faith, was 
the response to his most ardent aspirations. It was an 
inestimable privilege for such a mind as his to meet 
with a master like Clement, who had at that time the 
ascendant over him of great moral and intellectual 
superiority. He formed a close friendship with a young 
fellow-disciple from Asia Minor, who had come to hear 

* It is Alexander who tells us that Origen had listened with him 
to Pantaenus and Clement : Uarspag yap lajx^v, he says, in speaking 
of himself and Origen, tovq /uaicapiovg Utivovg rovg Trpoohvaavra 
Tidvraivov Kai K\rip.tvTa. (Eusebius, " H.E.," VI. xiv,J 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 287 

Clement. This was Alexander, subsequently Bishop 
of Jerusalem, who was to prove a valuable helper to 
Origen when evil days came. 

This threefold education in the family, the school, 
and the Church, had given Origen an early maturity, 
without, however, chilling his youthful ardour. God 
had yet in reserve for him sterner and more painful 
teaching. The fierce persecution which broke out 
under Septimus Severus made cruel ravages at Alex- 
andria. Origen's father was thrown into prison. It 
was a sore separation between him and the son who 
was bound to him by such tender ties, both as a child 
and as a Christian. Origen's soul was torn between 
his deep love for his father, and his desire to see him 
steadfast and immovable in the faith.' Knowing the 
tenderness of his fatherly heart, and fearing lest his 
courage should give way in the struggle, Origen 
addressed to the captive in his cell those heroic words, 
over which doubtless the hot tears fell fast : " My 
father, flinch not because of us."* Passionately he 
longed to be with him, and to die at his side, confessing 
the faith ; a yearning for martyrdom took possession of 
his soul. This was, perhaps, a sort of safety-valve for 
his youthful impetuousness. In vain his mother with 
tears entreated him to have pity on her ; nothing could 
move him. The young Christian soldier could not 
rest upon his arms while the battle was raging 
around. His mother was obliged to hide his clothes 
to prevent his rushing upon death. t This was the 
strongest temptation, the highest ambition of his 
early years. He had yet to learn that the courage 
of patient obedience is the most real of all courage, 
and that no man has a right to anticipate God's 

"E-txf, M Si 7]fxag d\\o tl $povi)oyq. ^EusebillS, "H.E.," VI. ii.) 

f Eusebius, " H.E.," VI. ii. 



2tf8 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

time. Leonides was put to death ; his goods were 
confiscated, and his family, thus suddenly deprived of 
its head, was plunged into distress.* A youth of 
eighteen was the sole support of his mother ; but this 
young man had courage and devotedness equal to his 
task, and to other duties yet harder and higher lying 
beyond. 

Origen found a temporary home with a rich lady of 
Alexandria, who loved him with all but a mother's love. 
Unhappily, she was strongly inclined to heresy, and 
had become ensnared by the brilliant and sophistical 
teaching of one of those Asiatic gnostics, who never 
scrupled to use intrigue and craft to ensure the 
ascendancy of their doctrine. They were wont 
especially to put forth all their art to lead away the 
susceptible souls of women. Paul (such was the name 
of this heretical teacher) was not a man who erred in 
good faith on some secondary point of Christian truth. 
He was one of those dangerous heretics, who under- 
mined Christianity under pretext of interpreting it, 
who borrowed its language, but despoiled it of all its 
moral and religious significance, transfusing it with 
oriental dualism and fatalistic pantheism. Origen, 
though his mind was open to receive all opinions, and 
never recoiled from the investigation of any system, 
did not fall for one moment under the seductive 
influence of the heretic Paul. Neither gratitude 
towards his benefactress, nor the reckless daring of the 
youthful mind, could lead him one step in this direction. 
He preserved towards Paul an attitude of severe 
dignity. He would not join with him in any act of 
piety, because he knew how easy it is to conceal mortal 
error under pious phrase, and equivocation in prayer 

* " Pauper relinquitur " (St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," liv.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 289 

appeared to him hateful.* That which was especially- 
repugnant to Origen in the bold speculations of 
Gnosticism, was the complete suppression of the moral 
element, and the formal negation of liberty in God and 
man. To these vivid impressions received in youth, 
we may attribute the sometimes exaggerated reaction 
in an opposite direction, by which the system of Origen 
is characterised. In conniving at heresy, he would 
have felt he was denying the God for whom his father 
had died, and he shrunk with horror from apostasy in 
all its forms, whether open before the tribunal of the 
magistrates, or lurking latent in the complacent smile 
and tacit approval of error at the table of a rich and 
benevolent lady. 

As Origen was not willing long to live in dependence 
upon any one, and anxious to free himself from the 
protection of a house where heresy was held in honour, 
he endeavoured to earn his bread by giving lessons in 
grammar. Grammar was at that time cultivated in 
Alexandria with much success. By the development 
given to it, it had become a really new science, and one 
remarkably adapted to the subtle and erudite spirit of 
an age, in which analysis was more and more taking 
the place of inspiration. It must not be supposed that 
grammar was studied simply as the constructive genius 
of a language ; it embraced also the interpretation of 
its literary master-pieces, the determination of their 
genuineness, and even mythology and aesthetics. It 
was a learned exegesis of classical literature. Origen, 
in teaching it, prepared himself by such studies for the 
exegesis of sacred literature, in which, in spite of 
serious errors, he was to occupy so eminent a place. 

* Ouce 7ru>7TOTS TtpavrpaTTi] Kara T))v i.v^)v avr<p avoTijvai. (Eusebius, 
"H. E.," VI. ii.) 



2gO THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

He was not, indeed, the man to devote himself exclu- 
sively to purely literary instruction. His faith was too 
living not to be diffusive, and he could not but strive 
to impart to his pupils his own most cherished con- 
victions. The School of the Catechists was at this time 
dispersed. Clement had retired into Asia Minor. 
Persecution had not stifled the desire after truth ; on 
the contrary, it had, as it always did, given it a new 
stimulus, and noble hearts were more inclined than in 
times of quiescence, towards the proscribed religion. 
No one offered himself to carry on the great work 
thus interrupted. Origen, actuated only by his zeal, 
took it up in humble measure, contenting himself with 
giving private instructions to some pagans, who had 
probably attended his course of grammar. Among 
these were Plutarch, and Heraclas, subsequently Bishop 
of Alexandria. It seems that these pagans were the 
first to ask the young teacher to instruct them in the 
Word of God, for Eusebius says that they came to 
Origen of their own accord.* Demetrius, the Bishop 
of Carthage, recognised the Divine approval in the 
success which attended the teaching of Origen, and 
conferred on him, in spite of his youth, the charge of 
catechist. A young man of eighteen thus found himself 
the successor of Clement. 

This phase of the life of Origen is full of beauty. 
Persecution had been revived under a new proconsul, 
and every day cruel tortures were inflicted on the 
Christians. To teach the new religion in such times, 
was to place life every moment in jeopardy. Over 
the heads of masters and disciples was perpetually 
suspended the glittering sword, and it was with the 

* l\po<rytcrav aurij) Tiveg cnrb tCjv Wvwv aicovao/ievoL tov \6yov tov 
6tov. (Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. ii.j 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 2gi 

dungeon and the stake full in view that they discoursed 
of the great questions of religion. Their discussions were 
not held in spacious courts or sumptuous villas. The 
little school met secretly, in some obscure dwelling, and 
always exposed to the danger of being surprised and led 
away to death. What a sublime theology was that on 
which there thus fell the flame of the sacrifice ever ready 
to be offered! If ever the name of philosophy was well 
deserved, it assuredly was so by these young disciples 
at Alexandria, who loved wisdom well enough to die for 
her, though many of them perhaps had caught but dim 
and transient glimpses of the truth. This school of 
martyr-theologians witnessed constant breaches in its 
ranks ; between two meetings, between two chapters of 
the same study, one and another catechist had been 
seized and sacrificed. The heart glows with admira- 
tion for these young adherents of the new faith, who, 
under a master even younger than themselves, pursued, 
in the midst of such daunting difficulties, the search 
after truth, who remained faithful to the liberal and 
enlightened spirit of the school of Alexandria, and kept 
their minds free from all passionate resentment; whom 
not even the ruthless persecution under which they 
suffered, could bring to regard paganism as merely a 
hateful and murderous foe, but who still viewed it as in 
many aspects the harbinger of the religion it sought to 
destroy. It required a rare nobility of soul and spirit 
to cleave to the liberal theology of Clement through 
all the horrors of the proscription. A mere question of 
doctrine and system was raised under such circum- 
stances to the moral height of loftiest disinterestedness. 
The example of Origen was of much force in sustaining 
the courage of his disciples. He might be seen con- 
stantly in the prison of the pious captives, carrying to 



2g2 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

them the consolation they needed. He stood by them 
till the last moment of trial came, and gave them the 
parting kiss of peace on the very threshold of the arena 
or at the foot of the stake.* More than once the irritated 
mob were on the point of stoning him, and he escaped 
only by a miracle. " The hatred of the pagans," says 
Eusebius, " was so violent, because of the numbers 
who learned from Origen the mysteries of the faith, 
that they were seen assembled in crowds around the 
house where he lived, trying to stir up the soldiers to 
violence. So fierce was the enmity against him, that 
no house in Alexandria was a secure refuge for him, 
and he was constantly pursued by the persecutors from 
place to place." t One day, when he had accompanied 
to the place of execution his disciple Plutarch, con- 
demned to death as a Christian, he narrowly escaped a 
summary and violent death at the hands of his fellow 
citizens, who charged him with being the cause of the 
death of the young martyr. £ Another day he was 
seized and dragged to the temple of Serapis, where 
palms were thrust into his hands to be laid, according 
to custom, upon the altar of the Egyptian god. 
Brandishing the boughs, he exclafmed : " Here are the 
triumphal palms, not of the idol, but of Christ ! " § 

In the midst of such imminent perils, Origen never- 
theless steadily pursued his course of teaching and 
his studies. His thirst for knowledge was insatiable ; 
letters sacred and profane, the systems of every school, 
all received his attention; all were passed under a 
scrutiny quick and eager, as was the conviction which 
inspired all his investigations and his entire life. It is 

* Tovg fxapTvpag fiern TroXKfjg Trapp^aiag <piki]jxaTi ■xpoaayopi.vovTa. 
(Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. iii.) f Ibid. % Ibid. 

. § Epiphanes, " Heresies," lxiv. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 293 

evident from his writings that he went on amassing 
knowledge through all this troubled period. He 
rendered himself familiar with the ecclesiastical 
writers, whom he quotes with ease and without 
pedantry. He devoted himself finally to philosophy, 
so as to rise to the dignity of a task, which became 
every day more arduous through the character of the 
affluent and lettered heretics who thronged to hear 
him. " When I had given myself entirely," he says, 
"to the Word of God, and when the reputation of my 
learning had spread abroad, a great number of heretics, 
men versed in the sciences of Greece, and especially in 
philosophy, came to listen to me. I thought it then my 
duty to study thoroughly the dogmas of the heretics, 
and all of truth that the philosophers laid claim to 
tell." * He subsequently took a more decisive step in 
this direction, by attending the school of one of the 
most illustrious philosophers of the age. 

No intellectual studies diverted Origen from that 
which he held of supreme importance — the pursuit of 
moral perfection and the realisation of the Christian 
ideal. It was almost inevitable that this ideal should as- 
sume at this period in Alexandria the form of asceticism. 
An atmosphere wholly impregnated with Eastern ideas 
could not be breathed with impunity, and the deserts 
presented the constant spectacle of the Therapeutics 
leading a life of extravagant self-mortification. Again, 
the ascetic tendency was upheld in uncontested su- 
premacy in the metropolis of Egypt, by all the various 
systems of philosophy, or rather, it was an element 
common to them all, and rose above all their diversities. 
The ancient religion of the country, with its ineffable 

* "Edo%€V tZeracrai re re ru>v cuptriKwv doyjxara icai rd rS>v <pi\o(r6$o)v. 
(Eusebius, " H. E.,» VI. xix.) 



294 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

sadness and preoccupation with the thought of death, 
naturally tended to foster asceticism. Asceticism seemed 
also to supply the starting-point for the religious reno- 
vation after which men's hearts aspired. The Church 
in Alexandria could not escape the same influence. 

We may observe, however, here, that the Christians 
never, in their most extreme self-mortifications, admitted 
the favourite dogma of the East — the irremediable doom 
of the material element. They never ceased to believe 
in the resurrection of the body, and to regard reverently 
the dust which was one day to be changed into the 
glorious temple of the enfranchised spirit. Let us admit 
yet further, that if Christianity does not seek the des- 
truction of the flesh, it does nevertheless require its 
mortification; it sanctions and counsels an asceticism, 
not to be prescriptively imposed, but induced by the 
free impulse of individual piety. From the time of St. 
Paul, it has been practised by all whose souls have 
grasped the grand ideal of the Christian life. Origen 
belonged emphatically to this company of elect spirits. 
We cannot wonder, then, to see him carrying asceticism 
to its utmost limits, under the impulse of youthful 
ardour and under the influences of his age and country. 
Anxious to escape from the necessity of teaching 
grammar, which occupied much of the time he yearned 
to devote to higher studies and more important instruc- 
tions, Origen sold his fine classical library, consisting 
of manuscripts copied with his own hand, for a sum 
of four oboli, which were to be paid to him by daily 
instalments to provide for his maintenance.* He ate 
only enough for the bare sustenance of life, submitted 
himself to long and rigorous fastings, and spent the 
greater part of the night in study, especially in the study 

* Thrrapaiv 6(5o\o~ig rijg t){xepag r^pKCiTO. (Eusebius, "H. E.," VI. iii.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 295 

of Holy Scripture.* He allowed himself only a few 
hoars of sleep, and his bed was the bare earth. He 
never drank wine, and walked barefoot, like the poorest 
individual, in the streets of a brilliant and literary city, 
where knowledge was the path to wealth. t No entreaty 
of his pupils could induce him to accept any payment 
even from the richest; he declared he had freely received 
and would freely give. The severity of his life was 
attested by his threadbare garments and by his 
attenuated features, which burned with the spiritual 
fire of the soul. He sought to carry out literally the 
precept of Christ, not to have two coats, and to take 
no thought for the morrow. This implicit obedience 
to the commands of the Master seemed to him strictly 
obligatory on those who bear the high responsibility 
of teaching His doctrine. Origen has laid bare his 
inmost thoughts on this subject in a homily upon 
Genesis uttered some years later. " Pharaoh," he says, 
"gives lands to his priests; God gives no parcel of 
ground to his, but says to them : / am your portion. 
O you who read this Scripture, mark it, and consider 
the difference between the two priesthoods, for fear that 
having your portion upon earth, and burdening your- 
selves with earthly cares and interests, you be the 
priests of Pharaoh rather than of God.J Pharaoh 
desires that his priests should possess lands, that they 
may give themselves to the cultivation of their fields 

* Tore fitv toiq Iv aairaiQ yvpvacnoig tva(TKOVf.ievog. (EusebillS, "H. E.," 

VI. Hi.) 

f MrjCivl /j.r]SaiJ.u>Q Ktxprjfisvog v7rodrj[AaTi, dX\d koI oivov \pii(no)Q cltt- 
eaxrifJ-evog. (Ibid.) 

X " Observate ergo qui hsec legitis, omnes Domini, sacerdotes 
et videte quae sit, differentia sacerdotum, ne forte qui partem 
habent in terra et terrenis cultibus ac studiis vacant, non tarn 
Domini quam Pharaonis sacerdotes esse videantur." (Origen, 
"In Gen. Horn," xvi. 51.) 



296 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and possessions, not to that of souls and of the Divine 
law. Listen to that which the Lord Jesus Christ 
enjoins His priests : * He that forsaketh not all that 
he hath, cannot be my disciple.' I tremble as I repeat 
these words. It is myself, aye myself, whom I accuse, 
and I speak my own condemnation.*" Jesus Christ 
rejects as His disciple him who possesses anything, and 
has not forsaken all that he had. And we, what are we 
doing ? With what face can we read these declarations 
ourselves and expound them to the people, when not 
only have we not renounced all that we have, but are 
even anxious to acquire more than we possessed before 
we knew Christ ? Condemned as we are by our own 
conscience, have we the right to be silent and to keep 
back that which is written against us ? No, I will not 
aggravate my crime. I avow, here in the presence of 
this people, t that these things are written, even though 
I know that I have failed to carry them out. But after 
such a declaration, let us make haste to fulfil them; let 
us press out of the ranks of the priests of Pharaoh, who 
have their possessions upon earth, into the ranks of 
the priests of the Lord, who have not their portion in 
worldly things, but have God Himself for their 
heritage. Such an one was he who said : ' We are as 
poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and 
yet possessing all things.' And, again, listen to Peter: 
' Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give 
I thee : in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise 
up and walk.' These are the riches of the priests 
of Jesus Christ. They have nothing, and yet behold 
that which they bestow ! No riches of earth can be 
compared with such heavenly treasure." 

* " Contremisco haec dicens." (Origen, "In Gen. Horn.," xvi. 51.; 
t " Confiteor et palam populo audiente." (Ibid) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 297 

Such words explain better than all the testimonies 
oi the Fathers, the influence of the young doctor of 
Alexandria. He was the first to bear on his own 
shoulders the burden which he sought to lay upon his 
hearers, and before he charged them to make them- 
selves poor for Christ's sake, he made himself the 
poorest of the poor. How vast the distance between 
such teaching and the elegant dissertations of Seneca 
on poverty, delivered with the practical comment of the 
gold stored away in the cellar of his mansion. Origen 
might well say, modifying the famous melancholy 
adage of pagan antiquity: "I see and teach that which 
is most excellent ; I strive with groanings to attain 
to it." Thus it was said by those who saw him, "As is 
his teaching so is his life."* His life was the most 
beautiful of his sermons. The illustrious professors 
of the Museum of Alexandria, with all their glory and 
authority, could not contend victoriously with this 
young man — the hero and martyr of his faith — teaching 
in secret in an upper chamber, in the midst of poverty 
and reproach, his body arrayed in vile raiment and 
wasted with toil and fasting. 

Not satisfied with self-mortification, Origen even 
went so far as to mutilate his body, taking literally 
the words of the Saviour about those who make them- 
selves eunuchs for the kingdom of God.t It is strange 
to see the great defender of allegorical interpretation 
belying on this point his favourite theories. One cannot 
help asking how it was, that with his enlarged and 
enlightened intellect, he fell into this unexampled error, 
which he afterwards fully recognised as such. It 
must be regarded as the unreasoning and passionate 

* Olov yovv rov Xoyov TOiovde <pa<ri rov rpbrcov. (Eusebius, "H. E.," 

VI. Hi.) f ' ATCkOVGTtpOV KCU VECLVLK&TtpOV 6K\aj3(x)V. (Ibid.. VM.) 

20 



298 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

reaction, so to speak, against youthful lusts. Conscious 
that in spite of all his austerities these were still stirring 
within him, feeling his pulses beat quicker at their 
suggestion even on his naked couch of earth, more self- 
humiliated by the mere approach of temptation than 
others by actual sin, finding snares in his teaching, 
which brought him into contact with women as well 
as men,* and eager to avoid even the appearance of 
evil and any pretext for calumrty, Origen thought 
himself happy in finding in the Gospel, words which 
would warrant his escape from all these humiliating 
struggles. Clearly he acted with blind precipitation, 
and fell into grave error; but his motive was pure, 
and while blaming him, one is fain to respect even in 
its aberrations such sensitiveness of conscience, such 
unshrinking intensity of religious feeling. 

Origen was not one of those proud ascetics, who 
submit to privations only to be repaid in glory and the 
praise of their fellows for all that they voluntarily 
endure, and who fast and go about with sad coun- 
tenances that they may draw upon themselves the 
attention of men. His austerity was the secret of his 
private life, and he would have fain kept secret all his 
self-inflicted penances. Demetrius, Bishop of Alexan- 
dria, was nevertheless apprised of his imprudent act of 
self-mutilation; but he judged him as we have judged 
him, admiring and blaming at the same time, and he 
encouraged Origen to continue courageously a course 
of instruction which was attended with ever-growing 
success, t 

It was at this time he took a step which was to be 
variously judged, He discerned in the greater part 

* Aid to fit) avopdai fiovov Kai yvvai'O St rd Qua 7rpoao}ii\uv. (EusebillS, 

"H. E.," Vl.viii.) f Ibid. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 2Q9 

of his Alexandrine hearers, the trace of a rival power, 
which sought to divide their allegiance. This was the 
influence of a philosopher who had recently founded 
a new school, admirably adapted to those times of 
agitation, in which idealised memories of the past 
blended with aspirations towards the future, and 
the human soul, wearied but restless still with deep 
desire, failed to distinguish between religion and 
philosophy, and would fain at once believe and know, 
worship and adore. Ammonius Saccas — this was the 
philosopher's name — combined with much skill the 
old philosophical traditions of Greece, and especially 
Platonism, which was much in favour, with the new 
needs of the age, and with that new oriental theosophy 
without which all doctrine appeared at that time dry 
and sterile. He wrote nothing, but he exerted by his 
oral teaching an influence resembling that of Socrates. 
To attempt to reconcile Greek speculation with the 
religious mysteries of the East, was nothing very new. 
or very daring at Alexandria; it was an essay constantly 
repeated. But Ammonius Saccas put into it new 
ability and new method ; it might be predicted that 
he would found a great school, and that if pagan 
philosophy shone forth again in renewed lustre, it would 
be indebted to him for its revival. Origen, ever clear- 
sighted, at once perceived that the conflict would be 
severe, and, anxious to become familiar with his op- 
ponent's mode of thought, believing it possible also 
that he might receive some light from him, he repaired 
to the school of the new philosopher. There he met 
with a young man of large intellect, who united the 
most scrupulous devotion as a pagan, to a bold system 
of metaphysics. This was Porphyry, subsequently to 
become a formidable foe to Christianity. Porphyry 



300 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

thus describes the impression which Origen made upon 
him at this time: "I remember," he says, "having 
seen Origen in my youth. His glory was then great, 
and it has been enhanced among his followers by the 
works he has left behind. He was a hearer of the 
philosopher Ammonius, the instigator of the greatest 
advance in philosophy made in our age."* Origen felt 
no scruple in giving his mind to these deep researches. 
They seemed to him a preparation and introduction, 
as it were, to Christian theology. To study Greek 
philosophy was in his view, as he himself tells us, 
to carry off the gold of the Egyptians, to convert it 
into the sacred vessels of the altar. t He boldly 
took the position of a Christian philosopher at Alex- 
andria, and wore, like Justin Martyr, the philosopher's 
mantle4 

He made use of the interval of peace enjoyed by the 
Christians after the death of Septimus Severus, and 
during the reign of Caracalla, to undertake the first 
of his great journeys. He desired to visit the Church 
of the West, which differed in many respects from that 
of the East, but which had so nobly paid its tribute 
of martyrs to the persecution. The Church of Rome 
had a special interest for him on account both of its 
history and position. It was at that time the oldest 
of the great Churches of the West.§ Here Peter and 
Paul had suffered martyrdom, and their graves were 
still to be seen. The most eminent and the most 
dangerous heretics had all visited it ; an entire nation 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xix. 

f a lva (TKvXsvuavTeg rovg AiyvTrriovg, ivpuGW vXrjv 7rpbg ti)v Kara<jKtv))v 
tojv irapakap.$avo\ikvuv elg tyjv npbg 9eov Xarpsiav (Origen, " Epist. ad 
Gregor.," I. xxx.) 

J ®i\6<ro<pov dva\a(3ojv GXW - (Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xiv.) 

§ Ttjv apxaiordrriv. (Ibid., xiv.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 3OI 

had there been won over from idolatry to Christ. Rome 
was also the capital of the world, the imperial city, the 
western Babylon, which had made all nations drink 
of the cup of her abominations, and which still exerted 
an irresistible fascination. There only could paganism 
be seen carried out to its full and final issues, exhibited 
in all its glory and in all its shame, and spreading over 
its corruption a robe of royal purple. Origen does not 
appear to have made a long sojourn at Rome.* There 
was indeed nothing likely to detain him. He found 
himself in a world altogether foreign to his favourite 
pursuits. The practice and internal government of 
the Church were the subjects most interesting to the 
Christians of Rome. The grave questions of doctrine 
and apology agitated in the East, had but small interest 
for these practical and narrow minds, who were much 
more concerned about modifications in discipline and the 
ecclesiastical organisation of the Church, than about 
the settlement of dogmatic theology. The Church of 
Rome was passing at this period through an internal 
crisis, which we shall presently describe in detail. Let 
it suffice now to say that the hierarchical party, ably led 
by Callisthus, under the pontificate of Zephyrinus, an 
aged and feeble man, was on the verge of achieving 
a signal triumph. Origen belonged to the liberal party 
both in the Church and in theology. He could not fail 
to be therefore much scandalised by that which was 
transpiring in Rome.t It left a bitter and painful 

* "EvQa ov 7ro\v Siarpiipag. (Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xiv.) " Con- 
stat eum fuisse Romas sub Zephyrino episcopo." (St. Jerome, 
" De Viris Illustr.," I. iv.) 

t The recently-discovered manuscript, the " Philosophoumena " 
of Hippolytus, has been falsely attributed to Origen. The author 
of this writing, which throws a strong light upon this internal 
struggle in the Church of Rome, speaks of himself as a bishop. 
This wholly precludes the idea that Origen was the writer ; but 



302 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

impression upon him, as we gather from this significant 
passage in one of his homilies : " The Church is the 
temple of God, built up of living stones, but it has* 
members who live as though they belonged to the world. 
They change the house of prayer, composed of living 
stones, into a den of thieves. Who, then, seeing the 
sins committed in some Churches by those who make 
a gain of the piety of others, and who, not content 
with receiving their daily bread for preaching the 
Gospel, make it a means of amassing riches, — who, I say, 
would not confess that the great and glorious mystery 
of the Church has been changed into a den of thieves?"* 
Origen, in this passage, clearly marks the distinction 
between the visible and the invisible Church, between 
the Church as it is, and the Church as it ought to be, 
and it is easy to see how far removed is his stand-point 
from that of the hierarchical party. 

On his return to Alexandria, Origen gave himself 
again to teaching with renewed ardour. His hearers 
became so numerous, t that he was obliged to seek 
assistance from Heraclas, one of his own disciples. 
To him he entrusted instruction in all the prepara- 
tory sciences, reserving philosophy and theology to 
himself. His reputation spread far and wide, as 
was soon shown in a striking manner. A Roman 
soldier, from the depths of Arabia,' arrived one day 
at Alexandria, bearing a message, which seemed a 
strange one in such hands. His general had sent 
to ask the Bishop Demetrius and the Governor of 
Egypt, to send Origen without delay to him, that he 

those who ascribe it to him support our opinion, that his journey 
to Rome must have done much to strengthen him in his opposition 
to the hierarchical party there dominant at that time. 

* Origen, " In Matthasum," xvi. 22 " Opera/' III. 752. 

t St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," liv. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 303 

might confer with him on the Christian doctrine.* 
Origen did not hesitate, and at once set out on the 
long journey across the desert, to carry the water of 
life to this thirsty soul. Some years later he was sent 
for to Antioch by Mammaea, the mother of Alexander 
Severus, who, desiring to know the Christian religion, 
thought she could not do better than inquire of the 
famous doctor of Alexandria. t He remained some 
time at this liberal court, which gave a ready welcome 
to every religious doctrine, and erred only in this, that 
among so many conflicting ideas, it failed to make 
a choice. Origen expounded the truth of Christ to 
his illustrious hearers with as much frankness as to 
his disciples at Alexandria, and when he departed he 
left upon their hearts strong and vivid impressions, 
w r hich were, however, unhappily dissipated by a too 
lax eclecticism. 

In his extraordinary zeal for the interpretation of 
the sacred books, Origen, during his abode in Egypt, 
gave himself to the study of the Hebrew tongue. He 
was anxious to test for himself the exactness of the 
translation. He thought, too, that Hebrew, as the 
primitive language of mankind, would become the 
universal language ; he almost went so far as to ascribe 
a sort of sacred magic to the original words of the holy 
books. In this he fell in with the superstition of his 
age. At the same time that he was preparing him- 
self for these vast exegetical labours, he formed a 
friendship which was to be of immense value to him. 
A rich inhabitant of Alexandria, named Ambrose, 
had allowed himself to be led away by one of those 
numerous Gnostic sects, which went on multiplying like 

* 'Qg dv fxird cnrovSrjg cnrdcrijg rov'Qpiysvrjv tt'i fixpoii]v Koivojvrjaovra Xoyujv 
dvrcp. (Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xix.) f Ibid. 



304 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the phantoms of a diseased brain, and promulgated 
doctrines vague as the creations of a dream. Ambrose 
was one of those conscientious heretics who sought 
out Origen to inquire of his doctrine. By Origen he 
was brought back to a sounder faith, and from this 
time Ambrose entertained a most deep and grateful 
affection for his benefactor, and a bond of closest 
intimacy was formed between them. Ambrose 
placed his large fortune at the disposal of Origen, or 
rather at the service of the cause which, in his view, 
found its mightiest advocate in the learned doctor of 
Alexandria. 

His own desire was to give the widest possible sphere 
of influence to the teaching and writings of his friend. 
He knew well that Origen would not receive one coin 
for himself, but that he would accept any sacrifice for 
the spread of his faith, because then it would be not 
his own interest but the honour of Christ which would 
be promoted. Origen felt, like Clement, some degree 
of repugnance to writing books. He only did so at the 
pressing request of his friend, who urged it upon him 
incessantly, and provided the means for putting his 
thoughts into circulation.* Ambrose gave to Origen 
seven secretaries, who took it in turn to write without 
pause or interruption from his dictation ; and beside 
these he had in his employ a number of copyists. He 
himself was the most zealous fellow-worker with his 
illustrious master. Origen has paid a noble tribute to 
him in the fragment of a letter which has come down 
to us : " The pious Ambrose, who has devoted him- 
self to God, thinking that I loved work, and that I 
was truly athirst for the Divine Word, has convinced 

* ' AfxfSpoaiov sg ra fxaXiffra irapopfiovvrog avrbv fivpiaig oaaig TtporpoTTOiig. 
(Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xxiii.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 305 

me by his laborious zeal and his love for the sacred 
Scriptures.* . . . We never cease comparing texts ; 
we discuss them during meals, and after meals allow 
ourselves no time for walking or rest ; we return 
at once to our studies, and diligently correct the 
manuscripts. t So far from giving the whole night 
to slumber, we carry on our labours till very late, not to 
speak of the morning's work, which is pursued without 
relaxation till the ninth and sometimes the tenth hour. 
Such a measure of time should be devoted to teaching 
and the deep study of the Divine oracles, by all who 
wish to make them the serious business of life." J 

There was something beautiful and noble in the asso- 
ciation of these two men, of whom the one placed all 
his fortune and all his interest at the service of truth, 
and the other consecrated to it all his genius. The 
house of Ambrose became a sort of scientific and 
Christian monastery, where zeal alone imposed severe 
regulations, which were freely accepted and joyfully 
observed. It was a sort of foreshadowing of Port- 
Royal. Origen was thus enabled to accomplish vast 
exegetical labours. He endeavoured first to fix the 
text and the literal sense of the holy books ; he began 
to draw up the ingenious comparative table, which 
placed side by side the Hebrew text, the Septuagint 
version, and several other ancient translations. § Fol- 
lowing the example of the Alexandrian grammarians, 
he wrote scholiums and commentaries on the sacred 
text, in which he endeavoured to give an intimate 
knowledge of the sacred writers, and to present their 

* No/ii£aiv pa tyiXoirovov elvat kcli ttclvv hifyav rov Oeiov \6yov fjXeyZe 
ry IStq. (piXoTfovla. (Origen, " Epist. ad quemdam de Ambrosio." 
" Opera/' I. 63.) 

f 'ilv to'iq Kaipolq tKtivoiQ tyiXoXoy&v /ecu a.Kpi[3ovv rd avriypacpa (Ibid.) 
I Ibid. § Epiphanes, "Hseres.," lxiv. 



306 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

chain of thought. Origen was in truth the creator of 
scientific exegesis, and in spite of the defects of his 
allegorical method, he fairly merits the glory of having 
first apprehended what a commentary on sacred Scrip- 
ture ought to be. Before him, theologians had made 
ingenious dissertations upon texts. He tried to elicit 
their real meaning. He was the first to attempt to 
determine the true text, and to interpret it. He fell 
into many errors, but he nevertheless opened a mine 
of wealth. His Commentaries on St. John, on Genesis, 
and the Psalms, were commenced at this time. His 
great delight was in the study of St. John ; he rejoiced 
to trace him in his calm and royal flight into the 
sublimities of Christian metaphysics ; he would fain 
follow him, who has been so well called the Eagle 
of the Gospel, in his soarings towards the sun of the 
moral world. 

Origen wrote at this period, beside numerous exe- 
getical works, the " Stromata," or Medleys, being 
extracts from the ancient philosophers. But his great 
work was his book " On the Principles," in which, with 
perfect candour, he stated his whole philosophical and 
theological creed. In this volume, Platonism was 
closely associated with fervent piety, and some vestiges 
of the dualism of the ancient Greek philosophy, were 
corrected and modified by so absolute a faith in freedom 
of action, both in God and man, that free-will was 
given as the universal explanation of the problems of 
the world and of history, the actual condition of every 
man being fixed by the anterior determination of 
his" will. In order to judge of the effect produced at 
Alexandria by such a book, which, after affirming the 
pre-existence of all beings, opened to them the bright 
perspective of universal restoration ; in order not to 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 307 

exaggerate the amazement and alarm which would 
be caused by theories so daring, supported by texts 
interpreted with more or less of freedom, we must 
carry ourselves back to a period which allowed large 
latitude to Christian thought, and clung tenaciously 
only to the foundations of the faith. Above all, we 
must place ourselves in the world in which Origen 
lived, in the midst of a Church which had re- 
ceived and approved the teaching of Pantaenus and 
Clement. The system of Origen, in the time and 
place where it was developed, did not exceed the 
liberty tolerated by the Church in matters of doctrine. 
It must not be forgotten, that at the commence- 
ment of the third century the Church had not yet 
instituted those great and solemn sessions known 
under the name of General Councils, in which doctrine 
was defined with the fixedness of a formulary. Faith 
found its official expression in the very simple formula 
of baptism, or in the slightly more detailed confession, 
which had as it were blossomed out of that, and which 
is now known as the Apostles' Creed. Men confined 
themselves to the great facts of redemption, without 
forming them into a system. Irenseus, some time pre- 
viously, had contrasted Gnosticism with that which he 
called the faith of all the Churches. He contents 
himself with affirming, in general terms, the fall, for- 
giveness, the unity of the two Testaments, the calling 
of the Gentiles, the incarnation, and the resurrection.* 
Origen did not at all overpass the limits assigned to 
Christian thought by the Bishop of Lyons, the zealous 
champion of orthodoxy. Platonist errors were diffused 
through all the atmosphere in which he lived. Univer- 
salism had not as yet been either discussed or repu- 
* Irenseus, "Contra Haeres.," I. x. 



308 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

diated. Origen, in insisting as he did upon moral 
freedom, clearly marked his divergence from Gnosticism, 
which was the great heresy of his day. He might 
therefore feel that he only made use of his most 
simple right, in giving expression to his views in 
his book " On the Principles." It is certain that 
the work produced no immediate scandal ; it was, in 
fact, but the epitome of doctrines which its author had 
long openly professed. Its appearance would doubtless 
excite some indignation in the ranks of the narrow 
party, of which Clement had already had reason to 
complain. This party looked with an evil eye on the 
bold flights of Christian speculation, and was espe- 
cially alarmed to see the Church invaded with 
philosophical theories and studies. Demetrius, the 
bishop, did not, however, at once break with Ori- 
gen ; he only subsequently made a pretext of his 
theological views, when he was anxious on other 
grounds to be rid of him. The question of doctrine 
was not the cause or the real occasion of the grave 
difficulties which arose between Origen and his former 
partisans ; it was but a cloak to cover a purely eccle- 
siastical jealousy. 

We are approaching the most painful and troubled 
period in the life of Origen, the period also in which 
the nobleness of his character shone forth with brightest 
lustre. Some years previously, in a journey made by 
him into Asia Minor, at the time when the Emperor 
Caracalla was filling the city of Alexandria with terror 
and blood, he had been invited by the bishops of 
Palestine to take part in the public worship, although 
he was not invested with any priestly dignity. This 
was quite in harmony with the ancient tradition of the 
Church. For a long time the right to take a direct 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 309 

share in the instruction and edification of the sacred 
assemblies, was held to be common to all Christians, 
and it had rather fallen into disuse than been abolished. 
It appears to have been retained longer in Palestine 
than at Alexandria. Origen had no hesitation in 
responding to the desire expressed by friends dear to 
his heart, worthy of all his confidence, and occupying 
a high position in the Church. He preached therefore 
at Csesarea, and with much success.* Demetrius, who 
was an advocate of the hierarchical principle, and who 
sought to maintain and extend the rights of the epis- 
copate, learned, not without alarm, that the illustrious 
catechist nominated by him, had preached without his 
authority. He feared also that Origen might settle 
somewhere at a distance from the Church to which 
his name and fame added so much lustre. He therefore 
hastily recalled him, but without giving his reasons. 
Evidently mutual confidence no longer existed between 
them ; a rupture might be easily brought about by the 
slightest misunderstanding. A short time after the 
appearance of his book " On the Principles," Origen 
— whose renown was daily augmenting, and towards 
whom all eyes turned in moments of difficulty, especially 
when heresy was to be confuted, because more reliance 
was then placed on weighty arguments than on authori- 
tative decisions — was called into Achaia, to confer 
with the false teachers who were troubling the Churches 
of that country. Eager to respond to so honourable an 
appeal, he set out for Greece, passing through Palestine 
and Asia Minor on his way. At Ephesus he had a 
conference with a Gnostic heretic. Immediately on his 
arrival in Csesarea, Theophilact, the bishop of that city, 

* "EvQa Kal diaXsyivQai, rag re 9eiag ip/j.r)vei>£iv ypa<pdg iirl tov koivov 
ri]gsKK\ri<j'uig 01 rfjde kwivKOTcoi, dvrbv r)%iovv. (Eusebius, " H. E./'VI.xix.) 



310 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and several other bishops, at whose head was Alexander 
of Jerusalem, urged him to receive consecration as a 
priest. They desired thus to confer on him the un- 
questionable right to preach ; possibly they may have 
also thought to give him higher authority, in the 
important conferences in which he was about to take 
part. Origen yielded to their entreaties ; he had no 
reason for refusing.* The various Churches already 
enjoyed large independence ; no fixed and general rule 
was imposed upon them. The tendencies of the time 
were doubtless leading towards the introduction of 
universal rules, but these tendencies had not as yet 
gained any decisive triumph. Such times were full of 
difficulty for men like Origen, who ignore ecclesiastical 
polity, and who, holding simply by consecrated and 
clearly-defined ordinances, are incapable of veering 
round with every current, so as to please their 
hierarchical superiors. Origen took nothing into 
consideration hut his rights and his duty. 

As soon as the tidings of Origen's consecration 
reached Alexandria, Demetrius showed the strongest 
irritation, and resolved to strike a decisive blow. Origen, 
unconscious as yet of the storm about to break on his 
head, left for Greece. He made the longest sojourn at 
Athens, disputing there with the heretics, and probably 
entering into communications with the philosophers of 
that city, brilliant still, though fallen far from its 
ancient greatness. He returned to Alexandria by way 
of Ephesus, where he encountered fresh heretics to 
be refuted. t Wherever he went he left the luminous 

* TXptfrjivrepiov ^eipoQ^a'iav iv Kairruptiq. irpbg ru>% TySe iTziGKOiruv 
avakapfiavei. lEusebius, " H. E.," VI. xxiii.) 

f This we infer from his letter to his friends at Alexandria, in 
which he complains that false reports had been spread abroad of 
the acts of a conference held at Ephesus. (" Opera," I. 3.) 



BOOK "II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 311 

traces of his great genius. On his return to his own 
country, he thought quietly to resume his course of 
teaching, and probably to obtain from his bishop 
authority to preach in the church of his native city. 
But he found all changed ; he met with coldness, 
mistrust, and severity, where he had always received 
respect and affection. He could not but perceive, from 
the frigid reserve of the most influential of the Alex- 
andrine clergy, and the solitude in which he was left, 
that some stern measure was in preparation against him. 
The narrow and bigoted party in the Church had long 
vowed implacable enmity to him, and this was too 
favourable an opportunity to be let slip. It is certain 
that the question of doctrine, though not officially 
brought forward, was from this time raised against 
Origen, for he himself tells us that falsified reports of 
his conferences with the heretics were used to his 
detriment. The irritation of the bishop gave the 
impetus to a long-latent opposition, which had been 
provoked by the boldness of his teaching and also by 
his great success. 

It is natural to inquire, what were the motives which 
suddenly inclined Demetrius to take violent measures ? 
Must we ascribe his conduct, as Eusebius does, to 
mean jealousy of the moral authority and the glory 
of Origen ? * The previous conduct of the Bishop of 
Alexandria does not justify such a supposition. We 
have seen him, up to this time, warmly favouring the 
teaching of Origen, placing him at eighteen years of age 
at the head of a School of Catechists, and recalling him 
from Csesarea in the fear of losing him. It must be 
nevertheless acknowledged that the influence of Origen 
in the Eastern Church had since that time gone on 
* Eusebius, " H. E" VI. viii. 



312 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

augmenting to such a degree, that he was sent for from 
all quarters to defend the faith against the encroach- 
ments of error ; and that a bishop like Demetrius, very 
jealous of his own authority, might take umbrage at 
this sort of moral episcopacy, which cast the merely 
official into the shade. It was not of the theologian 
and teacher that Demetrius — a practical man and a 
man of authority — was jealous, but of the counsellor of 
the Churches, universally consulted alike in Greece 
and Asia Minor. 

Nor must we forget that while the influence of Origen 
went on increasing, his boldness as a philosopher 
asserted itself more and more decidedly. These" two 
causes in combination might bring about a change in 
the disposition of his bishop towards him. We do not, 
however, regard either of these as the principal cause of 
the sudden severity used against Origen. Demetrius, 
as we have hinted, belonged to the hierarchical faction, 
which, especially in the larger Churches, was at that 
time seeking to establish itself. The promptitude and 
strength of his protest against the consecration of 
Origen, sufficiently indicate his tendencies in this 
direction. Origen, on the other hand, without falling 
into the extremes of Montanism, clearly belonged to the 
more liberal party, which watched with uneasiness 
the encroachments of the episcopate, and unsparingly 
marked its disapproval of the ambition of the hierarchy.* 
The sentiments of this party were well known to 
Demetrius, and the consecration of his subordinate at 
Csesarea, appeared to him an expression of this spirit of 
independence, which he was determined to crush at all 
costs. The act was not in itself illegal, but it boldly 

* It may be remembered that he compared the ambitious spirits 
at Ephesus to those who made merchandise in the Temple. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 313 

set at defiance all episcopal pretensions, overt or con- 
cealed ; it was necessary to take immediate and prompt 
steps in the case of a man who exercised so important 
an influence as Origen. It was enough for the bishop 
to show such an intention in order to call into clear mani- 
festation all the bitter feelings long secretly cherished 
against the great philosopher. Origen foresaw what 
was about to happen. After filling for so many years 
the post of teacher, with incomparable power, he might 
have gathered around him a numerous party, and 
sustained the contest on equal terms ; he knew well 
that the bishops who had consecrated him would not 
abandon him, and could balance with their episcopal 
approval the episcopal censure of Demetrius. But 
Origen feared above all things to create a division 
in the Church. The interests of the faith he held more 
dear by far than merely personal considerations. 
He was prepared to make any sacrifice rather than 
cause a rupture in the Church, and with a disinterested- 
ness worthy of the highest admiration, he anticipated, 
by an immediate departure, the rigorous measures 
preparing against him. The continuance of his course 
of teaching he committed to his disciple Heraclas.* 

Demetrius, far from being appeased by the conciliatory 
step taken by Origen, resolved to press forward ener- 
getically the condemnation of one whom he regarded as 
a rebel. He convoked a synod composed of Egyptian 
bishops, in which he gave seats also to the priests of 
his clergy. In this assembly Origen was pronounced 
unworthy of the office of catechist, and was excluded 
from the communion of the Church of Alexandria. 

* Ti)v cnr 'AXe^avcpdag jxeTavatTTncriv tnl t>)v Kaiaopeiav 6 'Qpiysvrjg 
7Toir l (jaixt.voQ, 'RpciKkoi, to rrjs Kar^x^crang SidaGRCtXtlov /caraXaVu. (Ell- 
sebius, " H. E.," VI. xxvi.) 

21 



314 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The synod did not venture to depose him from the 
dignity of priest or elder of the Church of Caesarea.* 
Probably some members of the convocation objected to 
any such interference in the internal government of 
another Church. Demetrius, who was determined to 
carry out the ends he had in view, assembled, as 
Pamphilus tells us, another synod, into which he 
admitted only his own partisans, and obtained, without 
deliberation, the object at which he aimed — the depo- 
sition of Origen as a priest. t This proceeding shows 
him to have been capable of very mean, ungenerous 
passions. Demetrius first brought up against Origen 
the imprudent act of his youth, and urged this as a 
reason for his exclusion from sacred orders ; but he laid 
greatest stress on the irregularity of his consecration in 
the midst of a foreign Church. He doubtless pointed 
out that, according to the special constitution of the 
Church of Alexandria, this consecration gave impor- 
tant rights to any one possessing it, since the bishop 
of that city was still nominated by the free choice of 
the elders. It is certain that theological rancour found 
ample scope in these two synods ; the excommunication 
would be inexplicable but for the presence of such a 
cause. All the services rendered by the great teacher 
were thus forgotten, and implacable hatred ruthlessly 
sacrificed this illustrious victim to the rising hierarchy. 
Origen was cut off from the Church to which he had 
gained so many thousands of adherents, to teach the 
world how much it costs to serve steadfastly the cause 
of liberty. 

* XvvoSog aQpoi^trai tiriGKOTrwv Kai tivojv 7rpea(3vTepuJV Kara. 'Qpiykvovg. 
'H Se, tog 6 Y\ap(pi\6g cprjm, ^(pi^tra jJiTaoTr/vai fiiv curb 'A\t'£avSpdag rbv 
'Opiyevriv Kai ftrjTS diarpifieii' Iv avrf, py t re didaaiefiv, Trjg piEVTOi tov 
-irpeafivrepiov Ti/xfjg ovFafioJg cnroiccKivijoQai. (Photius, " Codex," xviii.) 

f "O yi Aiifiiirpiog u/ia riulv tTriGKOTrciQ AlyvirTioiQ Kai rrjg \ipiixjvvr\Q 
cnriKripvie. (Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 315 

Demetrius did not rest satisfied with the twofold 
condemnation passed upon Origen. He hastened to 
make it known throughout all the Churches by letter,* 
and the Churches of Palestine alone took exception to 
the course that had been pursued by him. It was a 
time of poignant suffering for a man like Origen, who 
lived more intensely in the affections than the intellect, 
and who had cherished the most tender attachment 
to the Church which thus cast him out. He was not 
sustained under his sorrow by any of that false pride 
which resents injuries, and renders evil for evil. He 
detested heresy as deeply as any, and he knew well 
that his peculiar views were not suck as to exclude 
him from that Christian communion, to which he clung 
with every fibre of his soul. There was keen anguish 
for him therefore in this violent se.verance of a tie so dear. 
He felt himself in the right, but that could not blunt 
the edge of the blow which fell upon him. No angry 
word, however, escaped with his expressions of sorrow, 
and he was greater in the day of shame and desolation, 
than he had ever been in the day of prosperity. We 
find his feelings vividly expressed in those of his 
writings which date from this period. We have seen 
that he had commenced at Alexandria, his Com- 
mentaries on the Gospel of John. The closing pages, 
which he penned in that city, bear the impress of the 
sorrow filling his soul. " I have been enabled," he says, 
" to reach my fifth volume on the Gospel of John, 
although the storm raised against me at Alexandria 
threatened to hinder ; but Jesus spoke with authority 

* Tote ava ti)v oikovjusutjv i7ri<ncujroig Karaypa<piiv. (Eusebius, % 
" H. E.," VI. viii.) " Qui tanta in eum debacchatus est insania lit 
per totum mundum super nomine ejus scriberet." (St. Jerome, 
" De Viris Illustr.," liv.) 



3l6 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to the floods and to the sea."* In this fifth volume on 
St. John, Origen feels already compelled to say something 
in self-vindication. He replies indirectly to the narrow- 
minded Christians who accuse him of writing too many 
books, by showing that he who teaches always the same 
truth writes in reality only one book; that it is not the 
multiplicity of writings, but the promulgation of conflict- 
ing ideas, which is matter for regret; and, finally, that it 
is dangerous to deprive the soul and mind of Christians of 
wholesome nourishment, lest they have recourse to the 
too plentiful and poisonous food of heresy. " Hence," 
he adds, " it seems to me necessary, that he who can 
without deceit ,or prevarication stand forth as the de- 
fender of the Church, and refute those who are imbued 
with erroneous notions, should do battle with heresy."? 
He did not yet know, when he wrote these touching, 
earnest words, that he was himself treated as a heretic, 
and that the happy days were passed, when, as in his 
youth, orthodoxy was still broad enough to tolerate 
diversity of theology in the unity of the faith. 

He could not, in his exile, at once recover calmness 
of spirit enough to resume his labours. It was only at 
the instance of Ambrose that he set himself again to 
his Commentaries on St. John. He thought, with reason, 
that great buildings cannot be reared in the stress of 
the storm ; that there must be a time of rest and quiet 
to allow their foundations to settle. J He desired there- 
fore to await the return of serenity and peace in his 

* Ne\pi ye tov TTijiirTOV to/.iov ei Kai 6 Kara tt)v 'A\e%avdp£iav 
Xeifxdjv avTiirptiTTiiv, eSoKEi, ra cicofieva v7n}yopivaajxtv^ 87riri[iwvrog toiq 
avkjioig Kai toiq KVficKji rfjg daXdaarjQ tov 'Iricrov. (" In Johann., ;; VI. 
Vol. IV. ioi.) 

f ' AvajKCLlOV p.01 doKtl &VCU TOV Swa/AiVOV 7TpS<Jj3iVeiV VTrkp TOV tKK\T](Tl- 

ao-iKov \6yov a.7rapaxctpdKTujg 'LaTaoQai kclto. twv alpiTiKwv ava7r\a<J/.iaT<t>v. 
(Ibid., ioo.) | Ibid. 



• BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 317 

soul, before he resumed his labours on the construc- 
tion of the great theological monument which he had 
begun to raise. It was not long before he recovered 
that which he sought, as he thus himself tells us : 
"After I had left Egypt," he says in his Commen- 
tary on St. John, "like Israel delivered by God, the 
enemy assailed me with the utmost violence by fresh 
letters, altogether contrary to the Gospel, and stirred up 
against me all the winds of Egypt."* Origen thought 
it best to pause till this first agitation, which troubled 
his thoughts and rendered him inapt for commenting 
on % Divine truth, had passed away. " Now," he con- 
tinues, "" that the fiery darts aimed at me have failed — 
for God Himself has quenched them — now that my 
soul is grown accustomed to that which it is to suffer 
for the Word of God, I ought to bear more easily the 
onslaught of my enemies. Having recovered some 
composure of mind, I will not defer to resume the 
course of my labours. I ask God, who vouchsafes to 
enlighten the sanctuary of my soul, to aid me so 
that I may complete the edifice of my Commentaries 
on St. John." Could he possibly have spoken more 
generously of his adversaries, or sought more worthy 
consolation for himself ? 

A letter from Origen to his friends at Alexandria has 
come down to us ; it shows the same forgetfulness of 
injuries, the same absence of a revengeful spirit, the 
same charity, accompanied with the keen sense of the 
injustice done him. " Is it needful," he exclaims, "to 
call to your minds the discourses of the prophets, in 
which they so often reprove the pastors and elders of 
the people, its priests and its princes ? You can for your- 

* "Ettuto. tov ixQpov TriKporara yfxwv KaraaTpaTZvaa\d.vov Zia tup 
hcuv&p auTov ypafifidru>v. ("In Johann./' VI. Vol. IV. 101.) 



3l8 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

selves search them out in the sacred Scriptures, and 
clearly discern that the time is come of which it is 
said, ' Trust not in any friend ; put not your confi- 
dence in princes.' Now is fulfilled the oracle : ' The 
rulers of my people have forgotten me ; they are wise 
to do evil, but to do good they know not.' We ought 
much rather to feel pity than hatred for them, and pray 
for them rather than revile them. We have been called 
unto blessing, not unto cursing."* Origen then re- 
minds his readers that the Archangel Michael would 
not curse even the devil, but said, "The Lord rebuke 
thee!" "Now," he says, "we cannot know whether 
God did curse him or how He curses." Again 
he says : " Little sins as well as great draw down 
condemnation upon us. It is written that neither 
drunkards nor revilers shall inherit the kingdom of 
God. Let us, then, seek to do all things prudently; 
drinking with sobriety, speaking with moderation, so as 
to revile no man." " I marvel not," he adds, alluding 
to the calumnious charges brought against himself, 
" that my enemies distort my doctrine : have not even 
the letters of Paul been wrested ?"t Origen never 
swerved from this Christian magnanimity, and he 
remains the model of the theologian persecuted by 
haughty bigotry. Gentle as Fenelon under hierarchical 
anathemas, he maintained his convictions without 
faltering, and neither retracted nor rebelled. 

Epiphanes, the passionate enemy of every one on 
whom rested the shadow of heresy, sought to blacken 
the reputation of Origen by a vile slander, relating to 
his departure from Alexandria. He asserted that he 

* " Quorum magis raisereri quam eos odisse debemus, et 
orare pro illis, quam eis maledicere. Ad benedicendum- enim et 
non ad maledicendum creati sumus." (" Epist. Origen ad Amic. 
Alexand. ," I. 3 ) flbid. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 319 

had been carried before the altar of the false gods, and 
that the choice had been offered him between an im- 
pious sacrifice and an act of abomination. Origen, it 
was said, preferring purity to fidelity, had fallen into 
apostasy.* This story will not bear a moment's exami- 
nation, and is unsupported by any direct testimony. It 
has all the weight of moral probability against it, and 
is emphatically belied by the welcome given to Origen 
by the Churches of Palestine. It was at Caesarea he 
was to attain his full maturity of mental power, and to 
write his greatest works. 

He had not as yet trodden the soil rendered sacred 
by the great scenes of the world's redemption. He had 
long had a gfeat desire to visit these spots, so hallowed 
in history. He sought to drink deeply into the spirit 
of that glorious past, and to revive his drooping courage 
by meditating in view of Calvary, on the cost of serving 
faithfully a despised cause. This journey was also to 
assist him in his labours, by permitting him to see with 
his own eyes those towns and villages of Galilee, where 
the Divine words were spoken which were the subject 
of his Commentaries. He delivered several homilies 
at Jerusalem before Bishop Alexander, taking for 
his text the first book of Samuel. His later Com- 
mentaries bear many traces of this journey ; he rectifies 
some received opinions by information acquired on the 
scenes of the sacred story. f 

After a short sojourn in Palestine, he settled at 
Caesarea, and there recommenced his labours. His 
new school soon became as flourishing as that at 
Alexandria. Once again, wealth, intellectual and 
moral power, and earnest piety, acknowledged the 
attraction of his teaching. But quiet studies could 

* Epiphanes, " Hseres ," lxiv. t Redepenning, " Origen," II. 7, 8. 



320 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

not be long pursued in this period of conflict. The 
persecution which burst forth under Maximinus broke 
up the gatherings of master and disciples.* Origen 
had the grief of seeing his friend Ambrose cast into 
prison. He wrote to him on this occasion his treatise 
on Martyrdom, in which we catch the prolonged echo 
of the manly words, which in childhood he sent to his 
captive father: " Flinch not for us !" 

Origen found a place of refuge in Cappadocia, first 
with Bishop FirmilianuF, then in the house of a rich 
lady named Juliana, who had inherited the library of 
Symmachus, the Syriac translator of the Old Testament. 
This was a rich resource for Origen. He passed two 
years in this retirement, and it was from thence he 
wrote his treatise on Prayer, in which, after setting 
forth that which might be called the general theory of 
prayer, and showing how it practically solves the great 
duality of Divine grace and human freedom, he gives an 
eloquent paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer. It is interest- 
ing to trace in this composition, the thoughts which were 
pressing on his own mind at the time. Was he not 
thinking of all the persecutions of which he had just 
been the subject, when he so earnestly urged on Christians 
forgetfulness of injuries? " Let us remember," he says, 
"all our offences against God, how we have added sin 
to sin by our words, by our ignorance of the truth, by 
our murmurings at that which has befallen us."t It 
was a delicate and generous manner of humbling him- 
self for the errors which might have crept into his 
doctrine. Everything in this treatise is adapted to a 
time of persecution. Origen revived the courage of the 
Christians by setting before them the example of the 
great sufferer of the Old Testament, Job, whom he well 
* Eusehius, " H. E.," VI. xxviii. f Origen, " De Oratione," xxviii. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 32I 

styles the athlete of virtue.* Finally, he comforts the 
Church — well-nigh overwhelmed with tribulation and 
anguish — by the sublime thought of the mysterious 
bond, which in these dark days links it to the blessed 
and to the angels. " The nr*st of Christian virtues," 
says Origen, " being charity towards our neighbour, 
must we not believe that the saints in bliss have even 
a greater love for their brethren who struggle and 
suffer in this present life, than those can have who are 
still compassed with human infirmity ? Are they not 
our heavenly allies in the great warfare ? It is not here 
below alone that we may say : ' If one member suffer, 
all the members suffer with it.' It is meet that 
glorified love should in its turn say with St. Paul : ' I 
have upon me the care of all the churches. Who is 
weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn 
not ?' Has not Christ Himself said that He is bound 
in the person of His prisoners ?" t Thus the Christian 
captive sees beside him not alone his gaolers and the 
rough soldiers to whom he is bound ; he feels himself 
in the company also of angels and of the blessed, and 
in the beautiful figure used by Origen, the ladder of 
light which Jacob saw, comes down to him from heaven 
in the hour of prayer. 

The persecution under Maximinus having ceased at 
his death in the year 238, Origen returned to Csesarea. 
We find him soon after at Nicomedia, where he had a 
conference with a heretic named Bassus. His letter to 
Julius Africanus was written in consequence of this con- 
ference, to justify himself to that teacher for the use he 
had made in the discussion of the apocryphal book of 

* Origen says, in speaking of the defeat of Satan by Job : 

'SevitcrjiJ.evoQ virb t?]Q dptrrjg dOXrjrov. (" De Oratione," XXVlii.) 

t Ibid., xii. 



322 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Susannah. It cannot be denied that in this exegetical 
controversy, Julius Africanus was the defender of the 
cause of truth, in opposition to Origen, who was much 
too docile to ecclesiastical tradition on this par- 
ticular point. We do riot know what circumstance led 
him again to Athens. It was in that city — where St. 
Paul's penetrating eye had discerned, in the inscription 
over the altar of the unknown God, the dim yearning 
of the pagan breast after the religion of Christ — that 
Origen wrote the most poetical of his works, his 
" Commentary on the Song of Songs."* Regarding 
the human soul as the bride of the Word, for whom 
it had been created, he interprets the brilliant mea- 
sures of the Hebrew poet as the tender and passionate 
expression of the yearnings of conscience after the 
heavenly Bridegroom. The same spirit which animated 
Paul's sermon at Athens breathes in these pages, in 
which the paraphrase rises to the height of inspired 
poetry. 

On his return to Csesarea, Origen zealously pursued 
his exegetical labours. It was at this time he com- 
pleted his "Commentary on St. John," and continued 
or commenced his commentaries on the other Gospels 
and the Epistles ; those which he wrote on Isaiah and 
Ezekiel belong also to this period. t One very remark- 
able circumstance gave fresh proof of the weight of 
his moral influence in the Church. A heresy, which 
threatened to become dangerous, had just manifested 
itself at Bostra in Arabia. It originated with Beryl, 
the bishop of that city, who had fallen into serious error. 
He denied the distinction of the Divine persons, and 
regarded Jesus Christ as nothing more than the perfect 
manifestation of the one God. He had been led to this 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xxxii. f Ibid., VI. xxviii 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 323 

idea, which assailed the very foundations of the Chris- 
tian doctrine, by the exaggerated views of an opposite 
character, maintained by the sect of the Ecelsaites 
— an offshoot of ancient Essenism. The development 
of the faith had not been sound and well-balanced in 
these regions. Although Paul, immediately on his con- 
version, had preached the Gospel to the nomad tribes 
of Arabia, the ascetic and theosophic Judaism of the 
Essenes had always exerted the paramount influence in 
that country. The combination of a narrow mind and 
an ardent imagination must infallibly result in dangerous 
errors. Thus, Christianity had early assumed strange 
and incongruous forms on these hot desert sands. The 
distinction of the Divine personalities had become a 
coarse tritheism. The Bishop of Bostra, in opposing 
this error, which amounted to a, return to polytheism, 
had assailed the great dogma of the Incarnation, deny- 
ing the pre-existence of the Word, and consequently the 
full Divinity of Jesus Christ. A synod had been called 
to confirm or reject his doctrine, and he had been con- 
demned ; but he was not disposed to yield, and a schism 
was imminent. The bishops who had taken part in the 
synod were his judges, not his enemies. They sincerely 
desired to bring him back into the right path, for his 
piety and uprightness were beyond question. They 
thought they could not do better than commit this 
noble task to the great excommunicated teacher of 
Alexandria. They felt that if free persuasion was to be 
substituted for external authority, there was no man so 
fit as Origen to lead back into the true faith a sincere, 
though erring soul. Himself a sufferer from hierarchi- 
cal censure, his sympathy might be relied on; he would 
be no organ of the decrees of council, but would enter 
into the contest with fair and equal weapons. In truth, 



324 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

he was all the greater for that in which he seemed 
to be lacking; his power was in his weakness, for all 
that is subtracted of external and coercive force, is so 
much added to the force of persuasion. " Origen," says 
Eusebius, " after holding some free conversation with 
Beryl, in order rightly to understand his views, and after 
inquiring into his error, convinced him by argument, 
and by fair discussion took him as it were by the hand, 
and led him back into the way of truth."* Abundant 
success thus crowned the mission of Origen, and the 
Church might learn from the example of this restored 
heretic, the uselessness of coercive measures and the 
power of free persuasion. Would to God she had 
remembered this in all her conflicts against error — con- 
flicts so often rendered of no avail by the contrary mode 
of procedure ! A short time subsequently, a new heresy 
broke forth in Arabia, the substance of which was that the 
human body would be destroyed at death, to be created 
a second time at the resurrection. Origen was charged 
by the bishops of the country, to refute publicly this 
opinion in a synod convened for the purpose. He was 
no less successful in this honourable mission. " He 
argued," says Eusebius, " with such force that he led 
the heretics to repudiate their error." + The two 
dialogues on the Resurrection, which are ascribed to 
him by St. Jerome, may have been written on this 
occasion. J 

The empire had passed, in the year 244, from Gordian 
the Younger to Philip the Arabian, his praetorian pre- 

* *Qg ^* tyvio o n sal \kyoi, evOvvag /ir/ bpQolo^ovvra Xoyoa^i^ re 
irtiaaQ <ai airofctga avakafivv avrov. (Eusebius, " H. E.," Vl.xxxiii.) 

Redepenning has treated very completely all that relates to this 
discussion. 1" Origen/' II. 74.) 

j Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xxxvii. 

I Apud Rutin., "Adv. Hieronym., invectiv.," II. 



I!. — 7HZ FATHERS 5 7HZ HV? H _f 

7/. s rrince. vitlent ana truel in his general 
: shz'-v-f. himself v.-ell-aisr rsei ttvrarcls the 
i"5. I: his ::mersi:n :: ihristiamity mas: be 
5 fabulous, it is none the less certain thai he 
t Alexander St verus, aproteetorof thepr: s :r::e c 



relifrirr. :;:;:/ thrzarh ::: same s:m :: relimrus 
eclecticism rich did not. however exert :;.: same 
restraining mhrer.ie ever his ~ i:ral zharatter. 

ressei r ie::e: :: him =5 well as :: vis wife Seven 
designed doubtless to make him better acquainted 
a religion :: which he showed a favour a: that time 

Parma this rer ::i :: zalrr. m the I march's his::;; 

ti: m;:e his .it-: rrilmreti: ■ r :rh. Versed as he 

was in the rhil:s:rhy :f his time he kne ell ill it 

hai :: arre in :i : e:tim t: the new relirizm He knew 

trat its attains tenner, t: reetme e~ en aay r::re 

viilem his ear '-vis :rer t: its ierisive laughter re 

than to its passionate accusations. For r 

rs he h-i men rerlymr t: : :th in tne : rnrse :i his 

ihinn. hue mzmerrt is ;:nte t: cirri ccrether 

in :ne all :he arrmrterts "hith he hai s: : trier, rre- 

sertei . arc t: ttlea i ::: a il y teitre the " mii the :;. . t 

: Ihristr-mnty He hai hntselt .rrrivea it his hell 

natality :f nui ari s:al. ari tne n:es:ee :: his age 

n: less in kniwleire than in faith, he tenia iraw fr.rr 

the r::h treasury :i nis vast eneiitirn. He heir: 

hre :: ycuth. Tne enemies v.-h:nt he siachi te 
.::::: ere perfectly Inn; n t: hint arm: ne was 
wartime, in n: earn neeiei fir the am: Tne 
nai never yet hai a refer, iter s: therc-url: 

armea. He v.-as n:t the yam. Heirc sherheri 
* z_-::_i ■•:-: z v: :; . 



326 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. . 

going forth to meet the giant with a sling and a stone ; 
he was a mighty man of valour, handling all the 
weapons of his adversaries, and surpassing them in 
knowledge and dialectic skill, while, nevertheless, he 
cherished in his heart that which constituted the true 
strength of David — a deep and true faith, a child-like 
confidence in God. The philosopher whose attacks he 
repels, seems to have lived under Marcus Aurelius, and 
to have professed rather a vague eclecticism than any 
settled doctrine. Origen chose to reply especially to 
Celsus, because this opponent had the art of combining 
in his book all the charges brought against Christianity, 
whether coming from Judaism or Paganism. He had 
allowed no insinuation to pass unrecorded — neither the 
calumnies of popular superstition, nor the sophistries 
of the schools. Origen's book, " Contra Celsum," had 
thus the advantage of encountering anti- Christianity 
under all its forms, and overthrowing it with a single 
blow. Written very rapidly, at the pressing instance 
of Ambrose, it has no regular method. Origen wished 
to re-write it, but time failed him. It remains, neverthe- 
less, the master-piece of ancient apology, for solidity 
of basis, vigour of argument, and breadth of eloquent 
exposition. The apologists of every age were to find in 
it an inexhaustible mine, as well as an incomparable 
model of that royal, moral method inaugurated by 
St. Paul and St. John, which alone can answer its end, 
because it alone carries the conflict into the heart and 
conscience, to the very centre, that is, of the higher life 
in man. 

Origen gives evidence in this work, as in all that he 
did, of the high tone of feeling by which he was 
animated. " God grant," he wrote, at the close of his 
fourth book, " in the name of His Son, who is God, 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 327 

who is the Word, wisdom, truth, righteousness, that, 
enlightened by this Divine Word, I may order, and 
happily achieve my fifth book, for the greatest good of 
my readers."* Again he says : " May it please God 
that I may with my word penetrate the conscience of 
those who have read Celsus, and draw forth the dart 
with which every one is wounded who is not armed with 
the love of God, and pour into the wound the balm 
which is able to heal ! "t No intellectual advantage 
could have taken the place of an inspiration so pure 
and elevated ; i-t added to the force of the argument 
used to convince, the force of the love which constrains. 
We have now reached the culminating point in the 
career of Origen. The larger part of his great works 
are completed ; he is in all the fulness of his noble 
faculties. This is the moment to estimate, not his 
theological system — an exposition of which would be out 
of place here — but the qualities and defects of his great 
mind in religious philosophy, in his exegesis of the 
sacred books, and in his general teaching. Origen 
possessed in the highest degree breadth of thought ; he 
desired to bring under the dominion of Christ ail the 
spheres of knowledge — the past of humanity, as well as 
its future. But it may be asked, did he achieve all 
that he desired ? or, did he not more than once fall 
under the influence of the very errors which he aimed 
to confute ? It seems to us evident that if he was 
right in recognising, with Clement, the providential 
mission of the ancient philosophy, he nevertheless 
gave too large a place to it in his system. The mantle 
of the Platonist philosopher too often conceals the 
Christian, and he bears too plainly the marks of the 
disciple of Ammonius Saccas. 

* " Contra Celsum," IV. xcix. f Ibid., V. i. 



328 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The great reproach to be brought against him, as 
against the Platonic philosophy in all its forms, is an 
undue depreciation of the real, the tendency to an 
excessive idealism, which distorts that which it seeks 
to transfigure, and which, starting from the rejection 
or condemnation of the corporeal element, concludes 
with despising all realities — all facts, that is to say — 
and substituting for them chimeras or dreams. The 
ideal world, peopled with the phantoms of a speculative 
imagination, is preferred to the Divine creation, in 
which the true ideal appears clothed iri the vesture of 
the real. This tendency, recognisable even in Plato 
himself, reaches its ultimatum in Neo-Platonism, and 
in the Gnosticism of the time, and although in Origen 
it was restrained by very positive beliefs, it nevertheless 
exerted over him a great and lamentable influence. He 
himself treated with too much scorn, not only the 
corporeal element for which he always professed a 
truly Platonic repugnance, but real facts also. Hence 
the strange transformations which he causes to pass 
upon Christian d6ctrine and the Gospel history. He 
constantly forsakes the terra firma of fact, to soar into 
the cloudy region of allegory. Hence, also, the capital 
error of his system of interpretation, his famous theory 
of the triple meaning of Scripture. Distinguishing 
between the literal, the typical, and the remote signifi- 
cation, he avails himself of inexhaustible resources to 
escape the difficulties of the text, and does not see that 
he often misses the true treasure it contains, and reads 
a Bible of his own invention — a human book within the 
Book of God. It is vain for him to liken literal inter- 
pretation to Lot's wife changed into a pillar of salt ; it 
is, after all, more beautiful and more fruitful than the 
allegorical, which might be more fairly compared to the 



BOOK II.— THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 329 

carrying of a pagan statue into the temple of God, so 
much does it facilitate the intrusion of alien concep- 
tions into the true worship. It was, doubtless, highly 
agreeable to Origen to dispose of the polygamy of the 
patriarchs, by saying that each new wife taken by them 
represented the acquirement of some new virtue,* but 
this same system of interpretation often led him to 
miss obvious and important meanings. He complains 
that the friends of the letter have mixed sand with 
the pure stream of his allegorical exegesis, like the 
Philistines who filled up the wells of Isaac, t and he 
never dreams that of all the forces which dry up the 
fountain of truth, none is so effectual as exaggerated 
allegorism. 

This tendency to idealise would have been yet more 
fatal in its effect on Origen had it not been modified 
by the earnestness of his belief. He was kept in the 
right line of the Christian faith by the depth of his 
religious feeling. Although he was beyond question 
one of the most learned men of his age, he never 
bowed the knee before that idol of science which was 
then worshipped by Greek philosophy and exalted by 
Gnostic heresy. He ever put conscience above science, 
and moral freedom circulates like a life-giving current 
through all his system. He was its most ardent and 
able champion. His ideal of liberty was not that of 
the Pagan or the Pelagian, which is nothing better 
than a challenge flung by the creature at the Creator, 
and the insurrection of a pride no less impotent than 
insolent. Liberty, as he conceives of it, is the first 
of the gifts of God ; it is real only in so far as it 
is verified and made fruitful by Him, and the first 

* Origen, "Opera," II. 91. 

t " In Gen.," Horn. XIII. " Opera," II. 95. 

22 



330 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

work of Christ was to restore it. Origen never wan- 
dered from the path of true Christian theism. We 
feel that to this his heart bound him, and that his 
belief was on this point the expression of his re- 
ligious life. We need say no more than we have 
already said of the elevation and nobility of his cha- 
racter, nor of that noble passion for the ideal which 
consumed him. We will content ourselves with 
quoting two or three passages from his writings, 
which show what was the animating spirit of his 
theology. 

In one of his Commentaries on the Psalms, he de- 
clares that ignorance is preferable to false science, that 
the just man who knows nothing of human sciences is 
a far higher being than he who knows all, and knows 
not God.* He desires, however, that the Christian 
should feel a noble ardour after truth. " If," he says, 
"the Christian can learn to know equally well the Old 
and New Testament, so as to give an account of all 
that is written, he will be truly rich in every good 
word and work." Origen, as we know, spared himself 
no labour to attain to the possession of these highest 
riches. We have described his sleepless vigils, passed 
in the pursuit of all the knowledge possible to be 
gained, but even more worthy of admiration is the 
scrupulous conscientiousness which he carried into his 
investigations. He constantly referred to Jews upon 
questions of their tongue. He spared neither toil nor 
trouble to ascertain the meaning of a difficult passage. 
He studied sacred geography in Palestine itself. One 
day, desiring to know the name of a tree mentioned 

* " Melius est ergo hoc modicum fidei justo super divitias 
peccatorum multas quas habent in eloquentia ac sapientia hujus 
seculi." ("Opera," II. 666.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 33I 

in the Bible, he took some boughs to some Jews of his 
acquaintance, that they might inform him correctly 
about it.* 

Never in all his vast studies did he lose sight of the 
sacred end of all religious knowledge, never did he 
become self-elated. " If a man," he says in one of his 
homilies on Genesis, "puts out to sea in a little boat, 
he at first fears nothing so much as grazing on the 
shallow shore ; but when he has presently come into 
deep waters, when the. big waves swell around him, 
sometimes tossing him on their seething crests, some- 
times plunging him into the deeps, then a great fear 
comes upon him, seeing that he has committed himself 
in so frail a skiff on to such stormy seas. Such are we, 
we who, utterly devoid of merit, have dared to launch 
our feeble mind upon this great sea of Divine mysteries. 
But if through our prayers our sails are filled with the 
favouring winds of the Holy Spirit, we shall arrive safe 
in port."t He put all his trust in the invocation of 
Divine aid. " Study," he said, " will not suffice for 
the learning of the Holy Scriptures ; we must entreat 
God day and night, in order that the Lion of the tribe 
of Judah may come to us and deign to open the seal 
of the Book." J 

He repeatedly commends himself to the prayers of 
his hearers. "This passage of Scripture," we read 
in a homily on Leviticus, "is very hard to explain, 
but we shall be able to interpret it if you ask God, 

# Ovk oXiyoig 'E(3paioig avt6sf.u]v TrvvOavofxevog. (" Epist. ad Afric," 
vi. " Opera," I. xviii.) 

t " Ita etiam nos pati videmur, qui exigui mentis et ingenio 
tenues, iniri tarn vastum mysteriorum pelagus audemus." (" In 
Gen./' Horn. II. i. "Opera," H- U-) 

I " Supplicandum domino et diebus ac noctibus obsecrandum." 
(" In Exod.," xii. 4. " Opera," II. 174.) 



332 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the Father of the Word, to enlighten us."* He never 
belies this humility, and in his boldest speculations 
betrays none of the pride of intellect. " Would to 
God," he exclaims, "that I might pass for mad in the 
eyes of the unbelieving! "t A profound and reverent 
love for the word inspired all his theology ; it was 
because he loved that he longed so much to know, and 
all his knowledge he sought to gain by love. 

In his " Commentary on St. John," he has himself 
given us the secret of this high theology. " I think," 
he says, in reference to the last supper, " that there 
is a symbol in the fact that John leaned on the bosom 
of Jesus. It signifies that having given himself to the 
Word, and having plunged into its depths, he was in 
the bosom of the eternal Word, as that Word Himself 
was in the bosom of the Father. "J Such was the 
sublime conception which Origen cherished of Christian 
knowledge. He would that it should lean upon the 
breast of Christ, that by love it might fathom the 
mysteries of the hidden wisdom of God. If in his desire 
to magnify Divine love, he went so far as to declare 
the ultimate restoration of all things, with an assurance 
not warranted by Scripture, such universalism as he 
professed can never be placed on the same level with 
those convenient systems which sacrifice the moral 
law ; for that law is the constant pivot of all his ideas, 
and however large a reserve we make for his errors, 
he yet remains the ideal of the Christian theologian. 

* " Ipso donante poterit explicari." (" In Levit.," Horn. XII, iv. 
" Opera," II. 25.) 

•f- " Utinam ab infidelibus stultus dicar." (" In Luc," Horn. 
VII. "Opera," III. 390.; 

£ To (TVfi(3o\iicbv tovto irtpiGrqaiv, on 'lwavvijg avaicsifjievog Ttfl \oy<£> 
Kal rolg /jivaTiKojHpoig ivawavoixevog dvsiceiTO tv rolg Ko\7roig rov \6yov, 
dvaKoyov r<£> icai avrbv elvai Iv rolg KokTroig rov Trarpog. (" In Johann," 
Horn. XXXII. "Opera," IV. 431.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 333 

Realising all that he teaches, carrying into his specu- 
lations the fire of an ardent conviction, ambitious of 
knowledge, not through pride but through genuine 
love of truth, he unites the breadth of a great mind to 
the austerity of an ascetic life. He shows himself ready 
to seal his faith. by an ignominious death, no less than 
to suffer for it the painful persecution inflicted on him 
within the Church by sectarian narrowness ; and under 
this double martyrdom he remains invariably faithful to 
the truth which has taken full possession of his soul. 

If after thus regarding him as a theologian, we pass 
to his character as a master and professor, we shall 
not enter at all into the substance of his teaching, 
which would lead us back into theology, but shall speak 
of the impression produced by him upon his disciples. 
In this respect we have not to rely on historical infer- 
ences, which may be more or less exact ; we have a 
direct testimony. A young disciple of Origen, w T ho 
long listened to his instruction at Caesarea, and who 
became subsequently illustrious in the Church under 
the name of Gregory Thaumaturgus, has left us the 
vivid expression of his admiration for the great teacher, 
in a farewell address, delivered when he was on the 
eve of returning to his own country.* This address, 
though slightly over-emphatic, and bearing throughout 
the impress of juvenile enthusiasm, gives us the plan 
of Origen's teaching. It shows over what a vast field 
he led his disciples, in order to bring them gradually to 
the highest verities of the Christian religion. He began 
by thoroughly examining the ground into which the 
seed was to be cast, that he might know its advantages 
and its deficiencies. By free intercourse, he made him- 

* This address is inserted in the fourth volume of the works of 
Origen, p. 55 of the Appendix. 



334 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

self familiar with the intellectual and moral condition 
of those who came to sit at his feet. " Like a skilful 
husbandman, he did not pause at that which is visible 
and superficial, but delved into the soil to discover what 
it concealed, putting questions and problems, and wait- 
ing our replies."* He did not enter on his regular 
teaching till after this preliminary examination. He 
sought first to give an exact definition of the terms 
used in the school, being assured that his task 
would be thus simplified, and many misunderstandings 
avoided. By this very simple means he rectified the 
ideas of his hearers on some important points, and 
trained their minds to the severe forms of sound logic. 
From dialectics he passed to the natural sciences, 
mathematics, and astronomy. He doubtless fell into 
some of the errors of his time, but in spite of his 
imperfect knowledge, he elicited immortal truths, 
showing the miracle of Divine wisdom in creation. t 
He was impatient to rise from this lower world, 
however beautiful, to the higher sphere in which 
reigns the law of liberty. To moral science he devoted 
peculiar care. He established the notion of the 
essential good, and showed how this found its realisa- 
tion in the four great virtues enumerated by Plato; 
but he breathed into this old form the new and Divine 
breath of the Gospel, and gave a unity to the idea of 
the four virtues, by making them all converge to the 
virtue in which all others meet — the love of God. 

When he had thus prepared the mind of his disciple, 
Origen bade him launch on to the wide sea of human 
opinions. " He desired him to devote himself to philo- 

* Karavoivv, ov to. Traaiv bpojfiiva, avopvTTwv, Ipw-wv nai Trporeiviov 
(Origen. " Opera," IV., Append., 66 ) 
f ' Ifpag oiicovopiac Qavp.a. (Ibid., 67.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 335 

sophy, and not to neglect either the ancient poets 
or the ancient philosophers, rejecting absolutely the 
books of atheists alone. This profound investigation 
of the whole of ancient literature, pursued under the 
direction of such a master, led the disciple to form for 
himself a general judgment of antiquity, a just and 
equitable appreciation of its religious and philosophical 
systems. "He himself," says Gregory, "went before 
us, and led us by the hand along the path to be 
pursued. His practical eye discovered error, however 
subtle ; but he pointed out with joy the truths which 
might be discerned through it. Finally, after having 
thus, to good purpose, detained his disciples awhile 
in the porch of the sanctuary, he led them within, and 
opened to them the temple of the Scriptures, urging 
them to give heed only to God and to his prophets."* 
All his theology was based upon Scripture ; he 
simply commented on the sacred text, but he did so 
with such authority, that Gregory recognises the same 
spirit in the word of the interpreter of the prophets 
as in the prophets themselves. t 

That which constituted the power of this teaching 
was not its marvellous art, nor its elevation, nor its 
science ; it was the personal influence of the master 
himself. Gregory is never weary of this theme ; he 
delights to paint in brightest colours his first im- 
pressions on listening to Origen. He had come to 
Csesarea from a remote district of Pontus, accompanying 
his sister, who was married to a magistrate of that city. 
He purposed to stay there only a few days, but he was 
enchained, as was also his brother, who travelled with 

* Movq) de 7rpo(rsx^ w ©£<£> Kai toIq rovrov TVf>o^r]TaiQ. (Origen, "Opera," 
IV., Append., 74.) t Ibid. 



33^ THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

him, by the eloquent and persuasive words of Origen. 
Origen first won them over to the study of philosophy, 
which he recommended to them in general but pressing 
terms ; then he led them on to that sublime philosophy 
of Christ, which was to him the one absolute truth. It 
was not so much his eloquence as his moral influence 
which led them to renounce at once, country, family, 
and the legal studies they had already commenced, 
and which opened to them honourable prospects in life. 
They could not but yield to that strange fascination 
which Origen exercised upon all who approached him, 
to that indescribable constraining power which ema- 
nated from the Divine within him.* " Love for him," 
says Gregory, "was like an arrow which fixed itself deep 
in the heart, and could not be drawn out, or like a 
spark setting the soul on fire."t In listening to him, 
philosophy, and especially he who taught it, seemed to 
be preferred above all beside, and this because of the 
marvellous agreement between his doctrine and his 
life. He did not teach morals by words alone, but by 
deeds. He stimulated to good even more by that 
which he wrought than by that which he taught. J 
" We," says Gregory, "were neither just, nor temperate, 
nor endowed with any virtue ; but this noble man, 
whose soul was full of the love of all goodness, made 
us love it with a great love. He constrained us te ad- 
mire the beauty of righteousness in all its purity. "§ 
Such teaching was admirably adapted to enrich and 
render fruitful the souls and minds of those by whom 
it was received. They gathered more from it than 

* Ovk oT^ o-rrwQ <tvv tivi Qua dova/iu. (Origen, " Opera," IV. 
Append., 64.) 

f ®i\iag rifiXv ic'svrpov kvsaicrjxpev. (Ibid.) J Ibid., 68. 

§ TijQ SiKcuoayvriQ, rig to xpvatov ovtuq tdei%tv i)fxlv 7rp6aojirov. 
(Ibid., 71.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 337 

mere varied knowledge; it left deep in their hearts 
living seeds, which would be developed in places 
remote from the influence of the master.* The 
thought of this result was Gregory's consolation 
in parting from Origen after the most pathetic of 
farewells. 

The great qualities of the catechist were to be 
equally conspicuous in the preacher. Origen, from 
the time when he was raised to the office ot elder at 
Csesarea, preached regularly in that city. Numerous 
homilies delivered by him have been preserved. He 
preached from the Gospel of the day, or upon the 
portion of Scripture which had been read before the 
assembly. Following the ancient usage of the Church, 
the Scriptures thus publicly read were consecutive, so 
that each book was perused entire. Origen never took 
a single passage for a text ; he expounded an entire 
period. He commenced with the explanation of the 
passage, and then proceeded to its application. His 
great aim was spiritual edification, t His tone was 
usually calm, his language neither brilliant nor pas- 
sionate ; he had not the forcible eloquence of Tertullian, 
but on the other hand he used no false arts of rhetoric. 
When the subject demands it, he is capable of much 
elevation, and his style is rich and full. His imagina- 
tion diffuses a soft and equal light over his discourses, 
rather than those brilliant gleams which produce more 
immediate but less lasting effect. He exhibits no trace 
of that false priestly assumption, which seeks to im- 
pose the truths it feels itself incapable of communicating 
by persuasion. He plainly avows his own weakness, 

* "E(ttiv t)iuv atrkpfiara. (Origen. "Opera," IV., Append., 77.) 
f " Quse ad aedificationem pertinent proferentes." (" In Levit.," 
Horn. I.) 



338 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and, as we have seen, humbly entreats the prayers of 
his hearers. Such simple, earnest words, spoken with 
transparent sincerity, are sure to find their way to the 
heart, while the same truths, arrayed in a vain pomp 
of verbiage, or upheld by an unjust assumption of 
authority, die away without awaking any echo in the 
soul. As we read the homilies of Origen, we feel our- 
selves constantly brought into contact with a rare 
Christian, one who knows that true greatness consists 
in self-forgetfulness. 

The^time was at hand when Origen was to be with- 
drawn from a sphere of activity so rich and fruitful. 
He was ready to endure the trial of suffering as nobly 
as he had already endured the yet more testing or- 
deal of outward tranquillity. A short time before 
the peace of the Church was broken, he wrote the 
following words, which show his disposition of mind : 
" For ourselves, we are ready to undergo persecu- 
tion whenever God shall permit the adversary to stir 
it up against us. So long as God allows us to 
enjoy exemption from such trial, and to lead a life 
of tranquillity, strange in the midst of a world which 
hates us,* we will commit ourselves to Him who 
said, ' Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.' 
But if it is His will that we should have to fight 
and to suffer for the cause of piety, we will meet 
all the assaults of the enemy with these words : ' I 
can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth 
me."'t 

It was not long before the possibility thus anticipated 
became a reality. The terrible persecution which 
stained the reign of Decius, was, as we know? aggra- 

* Kai Iv fiiGovvTi rjf.iag to) tcovfiuj rrapacu^iog clpiivtjv dyo/utv. (" Contra 
Celsum," VIII. 70.) f Ibid. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 339 

vated by the tortures which the emperor commanded 
as a means of compelling the Christians to apostatise. 
Origen retired to Tyre as soon as the decree was" pro- 
mulgated throughout the cities and villages. This was 
a last concession to Christian prudence, for he was too 
well known at Cassarea not to be at once marked out as 
the first victim for the new sacrifice. It was impossible 
that he should escape a persecution so general and so 
violent. The desire of his youth was at length granted; 
it was given him to suffer for the cause of Christ, with- 
out the possibility of his incurring the charge of temerity. 
He had scrupulously conformed to the will of the 
Master, who counselled flight where it was possible. 
He now welcomed with pure and holy joy the ignominies 
and tortures laid upon him for his faith. The perse- 
cutors spent all their fury upon the venerable man, 
whose body was worn and wasted by asceticism, and 
by the vast and incessant labours of his life.* He was 
not only loaded with chains, but exposed to divers 
tortures. He was cast into the deepest dungeon, an 
iron collar was hung around his neck, and his feet were 
crushed for four days in the stocks. t He was con- 
stantly reminded of the fiery death awaiting him, but 
he stood firm under all agonies and threats. His 
persecutors, however, by a last refinement of cruelty, 
did not send him to the stake, imagining that they 
could thus deprive him of the crown of martyrdom. J 
Spent as he was by so much suffering, Origen had still 
strength to address words of consolation to his brethren. § 
His last thought was for them, and he died as he had 

* Toy irovi]pov cai/.iovng tcpafiiWuig r$ avclpi 1ra.v5-pa.TicL 7rapara^ai.dvov. 
(Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xxxix.) f Ibid. 

X M)]Safxuig avrbv dvskuv iravrl oQkvu ducaffrov cpiXovsitcwg kvaravrog. 
(Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xl.) § Ibid. 



340 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

lived, as ardent for the cross of Christ under his crown 
of hoary hairs, as he had been in his early youth. His 
tomb was long preserved at Tyre. His name was 
graven on a monument more durable than marble — 
in the hearts of his disciples ; and in spite of the 
controversies to which his system was to give occasion, 
and the passionate party spirit it was to excite, he has 
left the memory of one of the greatest theologians and 
greatest saints the Church has ever possessed. One 
of his own words strikes the key-note of his life. 
"Love," he says again and again, "is an agony, a 
passion: Caritas est passio."* To love the truth so as 
to suffer for it in the world and in the Church ; to love 
mankind with a tender sympathy ; to extend the arms 
of compassion ever more widely, so as to overpass all 
barriers of dogmatic difference, under the far-reaching- 
impulse of this pitying love ; to realise that the essence 
of love is sacrifice, and to make self the unreserved 
and willing victim, — such was the creed, such was the 
life of Origen. 



§111. The Fathers of the Eastern Church, from Origen 
to Constantine. 

The influence of the illustrious Alexandrine had 
gone on constantly extending and consolidating, in 
spite of the condemnation ot his bishop — an indubitable 
evidence that he had not, with all his boldness, de- 
parted from what may be called the dogmatic standard 
of his age. He lost his cause only before a tribunal 
not competent to try it. The more rigid orthodoxy 
of a later date applied to him its own measure, and 

* " In Ezechiel," Horn. VI. " Opera,'' HI. 379. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 34I 

passed on him one of those retro-active judgments 
which are the gross injustices of history. The number 
and quality of his disciples are alone enough to estab- 
lish his justification. The greater part of them were 
placed at the head of important Churches, which 
abundantly proves that they were not regarded as 
schismatics or heretics. The esteem in which they 
were held reflected honour upon their master, and 
vindicated him from the charges of Demetrius. The 
Eastern Church of the third century cancelled, in 
fact, the sentence passed upon Origen under the 
influence of the hierarchical party. At Alexandria 
itself, his disciples maintained the pre-eminence, and 
at the death of Demetrius, Heraclas, who had been 
the most intimate friend and trusted disciple of Origen, 
was raised to the episcopal dignity by the free choice 
of the elders. This election explains why Demetrius 
had taken care to exclude his clergy from the synod, 
from which he meant to extort the condemnation of the 
illustrious catechist. The majority in this leading 
council of the Church was on the side of Origen, and 
though it was for a moment taken by surprise, and held 
in subjection by the authority of the bishop, it rapidly 
returned to its true opinions. Heraclas, a pagan by 
birth, had been attached to Origen from his earliest 
years. He was the brother of that Plutarch who 
nearly involved his master in his own martyrdom. 
We know that the furious populace attributed the death 
of Plutarch to the master who had taught him such 
unshaken devotedness and heroic fidelity. Heraclas 
and Plutarch were among those pagans who, by their 
earnest questions and their thirst after the highest 
truth, had induced the young and brilliant professor 
of grammar to devote to sacred literature a course of 



342 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

instruction designed at first to be secular. Heraclas, 
after attending" for some time the school of Ammonius 
Saccas, soon became the colleague of Origen, who 
confided to him the preparatory class of his disciples, 
and thus gave the strongest pledge of his confidence 
in him. The assurance that he was leaving his 
school in such hands, on his departure for Palestine, 
softened the bitterness of his exile, and not long after, 
he had the consolation of seeing his teaching vindi- 
cated in the most marked manner, in the very city 
where he had been condemned. The elevation to the 
bishopric of his most familiar disciple, his second self, 
was a sufficient reply to all the accusations against 
him. We have few details of the bishopric of Heraclas. 
We know only that he always maintained the same 
spirit of free inquiry, and cherished the same desire to 
be thoroughly acquainted with the doctrines of his 
opponents, which had led him to attend the school 
of the pagan philosopher, Ammonius Saccas. In fact, 
Dionysius of Alexandria informs us that Heraclas 
never received a heretic into the Church, without 
previously requiring of him a full statement of his 
former errors.* 

Heraclas died in the year 249, and was succeeded 
by another disciple of Origen, who had taken his place 
in the direction of the School of the Catechists — ■ 
Dionysius of Alexandria, surnamed, by the just admira- 
tion of his contemporaries, the Great. He united 
the twofold greatness of a noble intellect and a pious 
heart ; he was equally distinguished as a bishop and 
as a theologian. 'Called to the leadership of the 
Church in times of peril and suffering, he showed 
himself an able and courageous pilot. Moderate in 
* Eusebius, "H. E. " VII. vii. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 343 

discipline, but of tried fidelity to his cause, he combined 
qualities too often divided, and had the rare merit of 
representing Christian liberty in a position where it 
has been deemed necessary to restrain or stifle it.* 
Born of a rich pagan family, he was early won to the 
cause of Christianity. He reached it by the path of 
free investigation, t and as soon as he was converted 
he became an assiduous disciple of Origen. J From 
him he received the general bent of his thoughts, 
without adopting all the views of the bold theologian. 
It is certain that he learnt in the school of Origen that 
moderation and breadth of spirit, which characterised 
him in the discussions of the age, and that union of 
gentleness and firmness which he always displayed. 
He had himself to encounter the opposition of the 
bigoted party, which chose to add ignorance to the list 
of Christian virtues given by St. Paul. Men of narrow 
and timid souls reproached him with following the 
example of Origen, and occupying himself too much 
with false doctrines. They would have preferred that 
heresy should be condemned without appeal and with- 
out evidence, and they would willingly have included 
within the vague circle of that term, every notion dis- 
pleasing to themselves. Dionysius believed in the 
efficacy of free discussion ; instead, therefore, of yielding 
to so convenient a prejudice, he continued to make a 
study of the errors he desired to confute, and refused 
to avail himself of the facile method of condemning 
that of .which he knew nothing. An elder ot the 

* Eusebius, "H. E.,"VI. VII., passim ; St. Jerome, " De Viris 
Illustr.," lxix ; Lenain de Tillemont, " Memoires," IV. 242. 

f This may be inferred from the remarkable vision he relates. 
(Eusebius, "H. E.," VII. vii.) 

I " Origenis valde insignis auditor." (St. Jerome, " De Viris 
Illustr.," lxix.) 



344 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Church of Alexandria had reproached him with reading 
the works of the heretics, under the pretext that they 
left a stain upon the mind. Musing, no doubt, over 
this conversation, Dionysius had a vision or a dream, 
in which he heard a voice saying to him, " Read 
all that comes in thy way, for thou art able to 
examine and judge of all : thus wast thou thyself led 
to Christ."* 

In the school of Origen, Dionysius also derived that 
spirit of large toleration, which he consistently mani- 
fested through all the crises of his day. Mixed up in 
every discussion of dogma or Church government, 
he uniformly maintained an elevated and conciliatory 
tone, while he almost invariably espoused the right 
cause, and defended it with worthy weapons. Dio- 
nysius never acts as an official personage, covering his 
theology with the episcopal mantle, and imposing his 
own views on others by virtue of his authority as a high 
dignitary of the Church. He desires no advantage 
over his opponents but that of the goodness of his 
cause, and uses no weapons but free discussion and 
moral influence. " I have given my opinion," he says, 
at the close of his letter to Basilides, "not as doctor, 
but in all simplicity, as becomes us in free discussion. t 
Examine it, O my very wise son, and write me, if thou 
hast found any views more just and better established 
than mine, or if thou hast come over to my opinion."! 
Faithful to these principles, Dionysius always pre- 
ferred conferences for open discussion, to synods of 

* liaaiv ivTvyxavz o'ic dv dg x ei P a ^ Xafioig. (Eusebius, " H. E.," 
VII. vii.) 

f 'Eyw Sk oi>x OJQ SiSacricaXog, uXX" wg ps-a ttclgijq anXoTTjrog TrpocrPJKOV 
t)f.iag dXXijXoig diaXeyiaOai. (Routh, " Reliq. Sacrae," III. 232.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 345 

bishops, where sentence is pronounced by a majority 
made sure beforehand. He witnessed the spread in his 
own Church and in the adjacent districts, of an error 
which he regarded as very dangerous, because it 
materialised the hopes of the Christians, and imparted 
to them a Judaic colouring; but he never fulminated 
anathemas against those who held these millenarian 
notions ; instead of this, he called forth a fraternal 
discussion, in which he himself displayed a truly noble 
spirit of forbearance and tolerance. This honourable 
conference lasted during three entire days, from 
morning to night. " I much admired," says Dionysius, 
"the firmness, the love of truth, straightforwardness, 
and intelligence of our brethren. Everything was 
done with moderation and order ; questions were put, 
replies given, resolutions taken. We endeavoured 
carefully not to show a bigoted attachment to our 
preconceived opinions, even though we might believe 
them to be well founded. In the same manner, we 
made no attempt to elude objections. We endeavoured, 
as far as possible, to deal with the principles involved 
in the discussion, and to establish them thoroughly ; 
and we were not ashamed to retract what we had said, 
and to give assent to the opinion of our opponents, 
whenever we found in their arguments the force of 
truth. On the contrary, our hearts were open before 
God, and we accepted frankly and fairly all that was 
established upon sufficient evidence, and upon the 
teaching of Holy Scripture."* 

It would be impossible to give more explicit recog- 
nition to the claims of free inquiry, or more fully to 
abandon any ground of fictitious authority, supported 

* MfjTe Ei \6yog aloe? fXiraTreiBeoQai -cat avvopLoKoytiv alSovfievoi* 
(Eusebius, "H.E.," VII. xxiv.) 

23 



346 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

not by the worth of the arguments, but by the quality or 
position of the arguer. Acting steadily on these great 
principles, Dionysius always showed the greatest respect 
for his adversaries ; he frankly accepted the diversity 
of standpoints, and never laid those who differed from 
him under the ban of the Church. He would not have 
used against Marcion the invectives heaped upon him 
by Tertullian ; he would have combated his views with 
equal decision, but he would have respected his person. 
Thus he testifies the greatest affection and most sincere 
admiration for Nepos, the apostle of the millenarians 
at Alexandria. "I esteem him," he says; " I have a 
tender love for him ; " and he delights to dwell on all 
the services rendered by him to the Church. Again he 
adds : " I revere him if on this account alone, that he 
is dead." But truth has its just claims; it demands 
to be defended. If Nepos were still living, Dionysius 
would propose a conference with him ; but as his 
writings continue to circulate though he is dead, it is 
necessary to meet them with a serious refutation.* 
It is easy to see in what a conciliatory and respectful 
spirit the Bishop of Alexandria undertakes this task ; 
it goes against his nature to fight with an adversary 
who can make no rejoinder. He does not hesitate to 
give the name of brother to Novatus, the schismatic, 
in the justly severe letter which he writes to him. 
Dionysius remained faithful to the principles of his 
whole life in resisting steadfastly the Bishop of Rome, 
when the latter wished to pronounce a condemnation 
on all the bishops of the' East who refused to recognise 
the value of the baptism of heretics. His opposition 
has the more weight, because on the subject itself in 
dispute, he shared the opinion of Sixtus ; but he could 
* Eusebius, " H. E.," VII. xxiv. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 347 

not tolerate such an abuse of power, and appealed to 
the ancient customs of the Church in opposition to the 
assumptions of the hierarchy.* 

Dionysius of Alexandria took an active part in all 
the great ecclesiastical controversies of the day. In 
reference to the schism of Novatus, he wrote several 
letters to the schismatic himself, to Fabius, Bishop of 
Egypt, and to the Egyptian Christians. His views 
on Penitence, expressed by himself in a treatise, are 
equally removed from the extremes of indulgence or 
of severity. When a discussion arose as to the virtue 
of the baptism of heretics, he wrote to Stephen and to 
Sixtus of Rome, and also to several members of the 
clergy of that Church. t He was the author of a book 
on the millenarian tenets, which was in fact an 
epitome of his conference with Nepos on the subject, t 
Eusebius gives us some important extracts from this 
work. It is clear that he rejected the authenticity of 
the Revelation, on internal evidences which we need 
not now discuss, but which indicate that he possessed 
much acuteness as a critic, combined with a dangerous 
facility of being led by his earnestness in opposing 
error, to take exaggerated views in a contrary direction. 
In the quarrel stirred up by Sabellius, he showed him- 
self too faithful to the views of Origen, not to cause 
uneasiness to the cloudy orthodoxy of Dionysius, 
Bishop of Rome, who accused him of violating the 
unity of the Divine personality. In order to justify 
himself, he wrote a treatise, unhappily now lost, which 
might have shown us how vague and loosely defined 
was the dogmatic theology of that period. § Besides 
some letters on the subject of the Easter celebration, 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," VII. v. t Ibid., VI. xliv.-xlvi. 

X Ibid., VII. ix. § Ibid., VII. xxvi. 



348 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Dionysius is also known as the writer of some letters 
of self-justification, addressed to one Germanus, who 
accused him of having failed in firmness during the 
persecution. The fragments which Eusebius has 
handed down to us of these letters are of great in- 
terest, for they show that Dionysius was not wanting 
either in courage or wisdom, and give us an in- 
sight into the stormy and trying times in which he 
lived. He had, in fact, hardly been raised to the 
episcopate when the decree of Decius was promul- 
gated through all the cities. The proconsul gave 
positive commands that Dionysius should be seized, 
and the soldiers sent in pursuit of him, sought him 
everywhere except in his own house, where during 
four days he calmly awaited them.* At the end of 
that time, having left his home, he was taken, and 
again rescued from the hands of his captors by some 
Christians, who, being gathered for a wedding, and 
hearing of the seizure of their bishop, hastened at 
once to his deliverance. In vain Dionysius implored 
his liberators to allow him to go forth to martyr- 
dom, that he might receive the crown for which he 
longed, but had not dared presumptuously to reach 
forth his hand ; t they constrained him to accept 
safety. He lived until the death of Decius in the 
deserts of Libya, from whence he secretly governed 
his Church. The reign of Gallienus gave a brief 
respite to the Christians. The persecution having 
recommenced under Valerian, Dionysius was dragged 
from his sick bed, and brought before the tribunal 
of the proconsul Emilianus. The proconsul desired 

* Meto. rrjv Terdprrjv yftspav. (Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xl.) 

+ ' AvsKpayov dedfitvog avrwv Kai iKtrtvoJv aiukvai icai rjfiag £$v. 

(Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 349 

him to merit by apostasy the grace of the emperor. 
The bishop, as vigorous in soul as he was feeble in 
body, replied with dignified firmness, and declared that 
he owned but one God, the Creator and Saviour of all 
men, who admitted none to share His honours.* The 
proconsul sent him back with the strange reproach 
of acting ungratefully towards the emperor. The 
Christian assemblies were forbidden, and the bishop 
was exiled. But he carried with him the torch of the 
Gospel, and every new place of banishment was like a 
new diocese presented to him by his adversaries. He 
returned to Alexandria in the year 260, when Gallienus 
was emperor. He found the city a prey to civil war, 
which was quickly followed by pestilence. The heart of 
the pastor was torn by this succession of woes, and he 
yearned to embrace in his fatherly affection all the 
Christians of the city.t The Christians, during the 
epidemic, distinguished themselves by their noble 
charity, rendering their persecutors good for evil ; 
forgetting the wrongs they had suffered, braving all 
perils ; calm and fearless in the universal terror, paying 
with their lives the price of their generous tendance 
of the sick, and teaching the pagan world what 
Christian vengeance is. Dionysius encouraged and 
directed this sublime self-devotion, alike by his word 
and his example. The great labours and sufferings 
which he underwent broke the strength of the aged 
bishop ; he was unable to repair to Antioch, where a 
council was convened to discuss the errors circulated 
by Paul of Samosata, against whom Dionysius had 
already given his decision in a letter. He died shortly 
after, having received from the council, in common with 
the Bishop of Rome, the honour of a special commu- 
* Eusebius, " H. E.," VII. xi. f Ibid., VII. xxi. 



35° THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

nication of the resolutions taken against the heretics. 
No higher tribute can be paid to his memory, than to 
say he was a worthy disciple of Origen, and that in the 
high position of bishop of one of the principal sees, 
he displayed all the heroic piety and large tolerance 
instilled by his master, with more of wisdom, both in 
theory and practice. He never forgot his obligations 
to Origen, and in the presence either of friends or foes, 
was always ready to express his high and grateful 
admiration of his old master.* 

Dionysius had found an invaluable helper in all 
times of difficulty in a deacon of his Church, named 
Eusebius, who had been summoned with him before 
the proconsul. Eusebius distinguished himself by his 
active and fearless charity during the epidemic which 
raged at Alexandria, and he rendered signal service to 
the Christians of the city during the civil war. With- 
drawing into one of the quarters which remained 
faithful to Rome, he obtained, by his own credit and 
that of his friend Anatolius, — well known among the 
pagans for his vast philosophical learning, — a capitula- 
tion, giving permission to the widows, the children, and 
the sick, to quit the besieged part of the city. Many 
Christians availed themselves of this permission to 
rejoin Eusebius. He received them, and treated them 
like a father. He sat in the Council of Antioch as the 
representative of Dionysius, and was subsequently 
raised to the episcopal see of Laodicea, in which he 
was soon followed by his friend Anatolius. The 
writings of these two bishops have been totally lost. 
Anatolius wrote a treatise upon Easter ; he possessed 
great advantage in the treatment of chronological 

* Mtrd Oa.va.Tov Iki'lvov Si HTtaivuv top 'Qptytvrjv dyu. (Photius, 
" Codex," ccxxxii.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 351 

questions, from his extensive knowledge of mathe- 
matics.* 

The halcyon- days of the school of Alexandria were 
now over. Dionysius was the last of its great masters. 
Two eminent men, of whose writings we have but 
detached fragments, still shed some lustre over it. 
These were Theognostus and Pierius, who both filled 
the office of catechist. The former received the 
highest testimony from Athanasius, who spoke of him 
as a noble and eloquent man, devoted to the pursuit 
of knowledge. t Photius, who is severe on his doc- 
trine, praises his eloquence, which he represents as 
truly Attic, and combining precision and power with 
habitual elevation. J He appears to have made full 
use of the legitimate liberty of Christian thought ; 
he preserved the tradition of Origen up to the very 
eve of the great assemblies which were so soon to 
enchain the freedom of conviction and belief. Theog- 
nostus wrote some " Hypotyposes," after the manner 
of Clement. 

Pierius, a priest or elder of the Church of Alexan- 
dria, was his immediate successor. He lived until 
the commencement of the following century, and by 
his extensive learning, his eloquence and asceticism, 
merited the appellation of a second Origen. § He exhi- 
bited the same contrast between wealth of thought and 
poverty of outward circumstances, — a poverty which 
he voluntarily accepted, and even sought, for its own 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," VII. xxxii. 

t ' A.vrjp XSyLog. (Photius, " Codex," cvi.) 

X KaXXtXe'^iaujg sv'Attik^. (Ibid., cclxxx.) See the fragments 
of Theognostus in Routh, " Reliq. Sacrae," III. 417-419. 

§ " Florentissime docuit populum et in tantam sermonis di- 
versorumque tractatuum qui usque hodie extant venit elegantiam, 
ut Origenes junior vocaretur." (St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," 
lxxvi.) 



352 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

sake. * He left a Commentary on the Prophet Hosea. 
Part of his life was passed at Rome. Photius asserts 
that he died a martyr at Alexandria, where a Church 
is supposed to have borne his name and that of his 
brother Isidore. But the silence of Eusebius and 
Jerome invalidates this testimony. t Photius is more 
worthy of belief when he extols the great talents 
of Pierius, his learning, his gentle and persuasive 
eloquence.^ It is clear that high literary culture was 
ever much sought after at Alexandria ; with it was 
often associated a fervent piety and a very positive faith 
on all essential points, but also much indefiniteness of 
dogmatic teaching. Photius reproaches Pierius with 
the imperfection of his doctrine of the Trinity. The 
see of Alexandria was at this time occupied by Theonas. 
This bishop has left no trace of himself in writing, 
except a letter addressed to the Christians who held 
any office in the court of the emperors. This is a 
valuable document, for the evidence it gives on the 
early relations established between the adherents of the 
new religion and the temporal powers. Theonas was 
succeeded by Peter of Alexandria, who was chosen by 
the elders on account of his ascetic piety, so much in 
harmony with the temper of the times. He perished 
in the persecution, after conducting for three years the 
affairs of this important Church. § 

* 'O n$v aicpug cLKTrj/xovi j3iq) Kal fiaQri/xacn <piKo(r6<poig iSidoKifj.a<TTO. 
Eusebius, " H. E.," VII. xxxii.) 

f It is certain that Pierius survived Dionysius of Alexandria. 
Ii his martyrdom had been coincident with that of Isidore, it 
would have taken place under the Emperor Decius. It is pro- 
bable that a martyr ot the same name was put to death at this 
period with Isidore. (See the discussion of this point in Routh, 
♦'Reliq. Sacrae," III. 436.) 

X "Ean de ti)v (ppdaiv aacptjg T£ icai \a1x7rpog. (Photius, " Codex," cxix.) 

§ Eusebius, " H. E.," VII. xxxii. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 353 

The influence of Origen was as strongly felt in Asia 
Minor as at Alexandria. We have seen Theophilact, 
Bishop of Caesarea, testifying for him the most faithful 
and fearless affection, and esteeming it an honour to 
make Caesarea a second Alexandria, by offering an 
asylum and a chair to the great exile. We have also 
seen Firmilianus, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, 
receiving Origen under his roof during the persecution 
under Maximinus. He remained always faithful in 
his friendship to Origen, from whom he had probably 
received the Gospel. He ever cherished the spirit 
of liberality learnt in his school, for he joined with 
Cyprian in resisting the pretensions of the Bishop of 
Rome on the question of the baptism of heretics.* 
The majority of the bishops of Palestine and the 
adjacent countries pursued the same course. We have 
alluded to the letter of Julius Africanus to Origen on 
the subject of the book of Susannah. It evinces a fine 
and practical power of criticism. His "Chronicle," 
in which he fixes the chronology of the sacred history 
up to the year 221 after Christ, and his letter to 
Aristides, in which he endeavours to explain the differ- 
ence in the two genealogies of the Saviour in Matthew 
and in Luke, mark him as an exegete of great sagacity, 
who devotes himself by preference to the conscientious 
study of the texts, and thus wisely counteracts the 
excesses of the allegorical school of interpretation. t 
He was probably Bishop of Emmaus, a town better 
known under the name of Nicopolis. The only 
remarkable incident in his life was a mission with 
which he was charged to Heliogabalus, for obtaining 
the re-building of his native city. Such a mark of 

* Cyprian, " Epist.," lxxv. 

t See the fragments ot his works in Routh, " Reliq. Sacra?," II. 224. 



354 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

confidence on the part of his fellow citizens proves the 
esteem in which he was held.* St. Jerome mentions 
another disciple of Origen, whose country is unknown ; 
this is Trypho, the author of numerous commentaries 
on the Old Testament. t 

A still more illustrious name is that of Gregory 
Thaumaturgus, whom we have already mentioned in 
connection with his touching farewell address to Origen, 
on leaving him to return to his own country.^ We 
have seen with what ardent affection he clung to his 
revered master, how joyously he embraced the Chris- 
tian faith, and abandoned a career of brilliant promise 
that he might the better serve his Lord, and devote 
himself entirely to the diffusion of his new faith. On 
his return to his own country in 238, he lived for some 
time in seclusion. A sudden call drew him forth from 
the desert. Phedimus, Bishop of Amisus, in Pontus, 
recommended him to the suffrages of the Church 
of Neo-Cassarea, a rich and flourishing city, which, 
through its nearness to the sea, enjoyed a daily growing 
commerce. Legend, making false use of that which 
was truly grand in the life of the holy bishop, has 
encircled him with an imaginary halo. He has been 
accredited with the wildest miracles, § transformed, 
indeed, into a sort of Christian wizard, upheaving with 
a word enormous blocks of stone. It is pretended that 
the Apostle John appeared to him at the request of 

* " Sub imperatore M. Aurelio Antonino legationem pro instau- 
ratione urbis Emmaus suscepit." (St. Jerome, "De Viris Illustr." 
lxiii.) f Ibid., lvii. 

I The principal document in the life of Gregory Thaumaturgus 
is the discourse dedicated to him by Gregory of Nyss., Vol. III. 
of his works. (See Lenain de Tillemont, " Memoires," IV. 315-341.) 

§ " Signa et miracula quae jam episcopus cum multa ecclesiarum 
gloria perpetravit." (St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," lxi.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 355 

Mary, the mother of the Lord, to reveal to him what 

he was to preach. If we subtract, however, all 

spurious miracles from his story, we shall still find in 

Gregory a man of ardent piety, working the true 

miracles of faith. We see no reason to question the 

tradition that he overcame a pagan priest by the 

efficacy of his prayers, and tore him away from his idol 

worship; but we reject the absurd embellishments with 

which this simple fact has been overlaid, That he 

brought a terrible pestilence on the city by his prayers 

to God against it, that he similarly obtained from God 

the conversion of the greater part of the inhabitants 

of Neo-Cassarea, so that at his death no more than 

seventeen pagaris were left in the city, — all this is but 

the indirect testimony of the men of his age to the 

diffusive power of primitive Christianity. He gave 

a beautiful example of Christian discrimination, when 

he appointed, as bishop of the town of Commonus, 

a poor shoemaker named Alexander, despised by the 

world, but great in the sight of God, who did honour 

to so exalted a station in the Church. During the 

persecution under Decius, he retired into the desert. 

We have regulations and canons addressed by him 

to a bishop of the country, reproving the unworthy 

conduct of some pretended Christians, who had during 

one of the invasions of the barbarians, so common at 

that epoch, fallen into grave irregularities of conduct, 

and even committed depredations. We trace in this 

letter the elevated spirituality of a disciple of Origen ; 

he declares, in effect, to the Christian virgins who had 

been made the subjects of the vilest outrages, that in 

the sight of God they remained pure.* His views 

on the person of Christ resembled those of Origen, and 

* Routh, "Reliq. Sacras," II. 257. 



356 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITYc 

he did not escape the charge of Sabellianism. He died 
in the year 270. Melchius, bishop in the same district, 
is praised by Eusebius for his learning and his great 
eloquence. One is ready to wonder what could be the 
advantage of placing a man of brilliant parts in these 
remote districts.* 

We have yet other names of some note to mention 
in connection with the Eastern Church of this period. 
Germinus, a priest of the Church of Antioch in the time 
of Origen, has left in history the trace of some writings 
which in our day are entirely lost.t Malchion, a priest 
of the same Church, had a public disputation with 
Sabellius, and was charged to convey to Rome and 
Alexandria the decisions of the synod of Antioch 
against this heretic. % Lucian, also a priest of this 
city, made himself known by his commentaries, by 
his revision of the text of the Septuagint, and lastly, 
by the Apology, already quoted by us, which he delivered 
in the presence of Dioclesian, at Nicomedia, before 
his martyrdom. § Archelaus, Bishop of Mesopotamia 
under the Emperor Probus, wrote a book against the 
Manicheans, which was translated from Syriac into 
Greek ; || and lastly, Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis, in 
Egypt, wrote an eulogium of martyrdom, and presented 
a noble defence to his judges, before being sentenced 
to be beheaded under Dioclesian. ^[ 

Towards the close of the second century there was 
every indication of an approaching revolution, which 
would exalt the hierarchy and magnify external authority 
in the Church. The moment was at hand when, for the 
second time, and in a much more significant manner, 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," VII. xxxii. 

f St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," lxiv. J Ibid., lxxi. 

§ Ibid., lxxvii. j| Ibid., lxxii. % Ibid., lxxviii. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 357 

liberty of Christian thought would be condemned in 
the person of Origen. The discussion with reference 
to him, after being for many years silent, was renewed 
with as much vigour as ever, in the very city where 
he had confessed his faith amid the horrors of a cruel 
captivity, and where his ashes reposed. The accusation 
of heresy was revived against him by Methodius, 
Bishop of Tyre, who had occupied successively the sees 
of Olympus and of Patara in Syria. Methodius objected, 
with justice, in the name of a wise and Christian realism, 
to the ultra-idealism of Origen ; he repudiated the 
doctrine of pre-existence, and insisted on the resur- 
rection of the body, which, in the system of Origen, 
was too much refined away. He would not allow, 
further, that the corporeal element was to be regarded 
in itself as the enemy or the gaoler of the soul. But 
he unwittingly and involuntarily acknowledged the 
influence of his great adversary, by the boldness with 
which he gave utterance to the doctrine of free-will.* 
However much ground there might be for some of his 
attacks, he seems to have made them with too much 
asperity, and he thus promoted an unjust reaction of 
feeling against Origen, which applied to him a rule 
of faith more rigid than that of his own day, and 
through him aimed a blow at the spirit of true liberality 
in the Church, no less than at religious philosophy. 
Methodius wrote a commentary on the parable of the 
wise and foolish virgins, a book on the resurrection, 
another on the creation, and a reply to Porphyry. He 
died a martyr's death in the persecution under Dioclesian. 
Origen found an eloquent defender in Pamphylus, 
Bishop of Csesarea, a man equally remarkable for his 

* A considerable tragment Oi Methodius' writings is found in 
Photius, " Codex/ 5 ccxxxiv.; St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr^/' lxxiii. 



35§ THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

severe piety, his voluntary poverty, his contempt for 
worldly honours, and his zeal for Christian knowledge.* 
He copied with his own hand the greater part of the 
manuscripts of the great Alexandrine, for the library 
of the Church over which he had shed so pure a lustre. 
St. Jerome tells us that he saw the copy of the com- 
mentaries on the twelve minor prophets, and that he 
regarded it with lively emotion, for it seemed to him 
watered with the blood of the martyrs. t Pamphylus, 
when thrown into prison, consoled himself by writing 
an apology for Origen, which was to be completed by 
Eusebius. The first book of this apology has been 
preserved to us in the Latin translation of Rufinus, but 
not quite in its original form and spirit, if we are to give 
credit to the vehement protestations of St. Jerome. £ 
This fragment proves that Origen was already placed 
under the ban of the Church, that his name alone was 
a bugbear to the narrow and bigoted party, § and that 
among his enemies some dwelt exclusively on the 
erroneous passages in his works, while others con- 
demned him unread. || Among his friends, many were 
too prudent to avow their true sentiments, and unworthily 
abandoned his cause. H Pamphylus, who was ready, as 
he proved, to shed his blood for Jesus Christ,** was not 

* 'Avrjp irapa o\ov tov )3iov -Kaat] dtaTTptipag aperr}. (Eusebius, " De 
Martyr. Palest.," xi.) 

f " Mihi videtur sui sanguinis signasse vestigiis." (St. Jerome, 
" De Viris Illustr.," lxxv.) 

X It is to be found in the fourth volume of the works of Origen, 
Delarue Edit., and in Routh, " Reliq. Sacrae," IV. 339. 

§ " Ubi Origenis cognita fuerint esse qua? placebant, statim 
displicent statim haeretica esse dicuntur." (Ibid., 346.) 

|| " Consequens erat neque facile condemnare et alienum ab 
ecclesiastica doctrina temere pronunciare." (Ibid., 341.) 

% " Nihil sibi cum ipsius doctrina commune esse confirmant." 
(Ibid., 347.) 

** Eusebius, " De Martyr. Palest.," xi. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 359 

a man to yield to the opinion of any, even of Christians, 
if it seemed to him unjust, and his last days were 
devoted to the defence of the great saint, who, in spite 
of numerous faults, had admirably harmonised the 
claims of science and piety. But this defence could 
not obtain a hearing in a time rife for the definitive 
triumph of the hierarchical party. Origen must in- 
evitably be found wanting when weighed in the 
balances of great councils. With Pamphylus, the 
era of free Christian theology in the Eastern Church 
ends. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FATHERS OF THE WESTERN CHURCH, FROM 
COMMODUS TO CONSTANTINE. 

§ I. The Fathers and Bishops of the North-West. 

The Western Church presents an ever growing con- 
trast to the Church of the East. It never enters into 
the speculations of religious philosophy. We find in 
it more schisms than heresies. Instead of disputing 
about the speculative foundations of Christianity, 
ecclesiastical government forms the subject of debate, 
or questions of discipline are agitated, as by the Nova- 
tians and the Montanists. Thus Italy and Africa 
present us with types widely differing from those we 
have been contemplating in the East. The first great 
figure which passes before us belongs, however, to 
the family of the Alexandrine doctors. St. Hippolytus, 
who was bishop in Italy, took part in all the doctrinal 
disputations of the day, and entered into the internal 
deliberations of the Church of Rome, with a spirit at 
once liberal and ardent. He might be called the 
Origen of the West, without the calmness and serenity, 
without also the brilliant genius of the Alexandrine 
Father.* Born in the latter half of the second century, 
* In reference to Hippolytus, see the " Philosophoumena," 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 361 

probably in Italy, the speculative bent of his mind 
made him seek the East as his intellectual fatherland. 
There he abode a long time ; so at least we are led to 
conclude from his intimate acquaintance with oriental 
heresies. Such journeyings were very common among 
the Christians of his time. It is certain that he was 
the immediate disciple of Irenseus.* He passed some 
years at Lyons with the Apostle of Gaul. Chosen to 
the office of elder at Rome, he was called to take the 
oversight of a neighbouring church in the port of Rome 
or Ostia, if we may credit Prudentius.t Here also his 
statue was found. He was the first celebrated preacher 
of the West. One of his homilies, having for its sub- 
ject the glory of Christ, was delivered in the presence 

Miller's Edition ; " Hippolyti Refutatio omnium Hasresium;" Re- 
censuerunt Latine vertenint, notas adjicerunt." (Lud. Duneker 
et F. G. Schneidewin. Gottingen, 1859.) Abbe Cruice has re- 
cently published an edition of this, with notes and commentaries 
(Paris, i860. The " Works of St. Hippolytus " have been edited 
by Fabricius. On the same subject, consult Eusebius, " H. E.," 
VI. xx.; St. Jerome, "De Viris Illustr./' lxi. ; Lenain de Tillemont, 
" Memoires," III. 236 ; Bunsen, " Hippolytus."' 

• * Photius calls him the disciple of Irenaeus : MaQijTtjQ 'Eiprjvaiov. 
("Codex,' cxxi.) 

f Le Moyne has asserted that Hippolytus was Bishop of Portus 
Romanus, in Arabia, the modern city of Aden. He grounds his 
statement on the fact that Eusebius placed the name of Hippolytus 
side by side with that of Beryl of Bostra, who was, as we know, 
an Arabian bishop. (Eusebius, " H. E.," VI., xx.) This supposi- 
tion will not bear investigation, especially since the discovery of 
the " Philosophoumena. ' It is certain that Hippolytus was bishop 
in the neighbourhood of Rome. We read, in fact, in the " Philoso- 
phoumena," p. 3, 'Apx'-sparna^ rs tcai oicaaKaXiag peraxovrec. To 
reconcile this post of bishop with that ot elder, which the author of 
the "Philosophoumena" seems to have held, Bunsen asserts that 
from the second century the bishops of the towns adjacent to Rome 
had seats in the Council of the Central Church, like the cardinals 
of our day, several of whom are bishops. ("Hippolytus/' I. 153.) 
Hippolytus was designated Bishop of Ostia by Peter of Alexandria 
in his " Chronicon Paschale;" by Cyril, Nicephorus, Zonaras, and 
Anastasius. His paschal cycle accords with the usages of the 
Church of Rome. 

24 



362 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of Origen.* He doubtless entered into familiar rela- 
tions with the great Eastern doctor, to whom he would 
be drawn by all the affinities of heart and mind. He 
was, in truth, like Origen, engaged in the study of the 
most important questions of religious philosophy and 
doctrine, and shared his keen abhorrence of the growing 
usurpations of the hierarchical party. The writings of 
Hippolytus exhibit this twofold tendency. He is known 
to have written commentaries on the greater part of the 
books of the Old and New Testaments, a treatise on 
Antichrist, whom he supposes about to be revealed; 
treatises on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit ; on God and 
the Resurrection of the Body ; on Good, and the Origin 
of Evil ; on the Work of the Six Days ; a Paschal Cycle, 
and a " Chronicle," after the manner of that of Julius 
Africanus. Homilies of his for feast-days were also 
handed down in the Church. His book on Substance 
was a polemical writing directed against Platonism. 
He is also known to have addressed a letter to Severina, 
one of the great Roman ladies belonging to the im- 
perial court. He was pre-eminently distinguished as 
a polemic. He directed a special argumentative treatise 
to the Jews ; but he reserved all his strength for the 
conflict with the heretics. We may mention among 
the writings belonging to this category, his book on the 
Incarnation, opposing the heretic Vero ; his homily 
against Noetus, his Little Labyrinth, directed against 
Artemon ; and finally, his great work upon " All the 
Heresies," a brief epitome of which he himself edited. 
This is a vast repertory, reviewing all the doctrinal 
controversies in the Church, from the earliest ages and 
most obscure commencements of Gnosticism. Christian 

* u Upo<TOfii\iavdel3iUde Domini Salvatoris, in qua praesenteOrigene, 
se loqui in Ecclesia significat." (St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr./'lxi.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 363 

antiquity has left us no more valuable monument than 
the " Philosophoumena" of Hippolytus, discovered a few 
years since among the fusty treasures of a convent 
on Mount Athos.* Without entering here upon any 
analysis of the system of Hippolytus, we may indicate 
its main characteristics. It is distinguished by a sort 
of fusion of the Eastern and Western elements. The 
Bishop of Ostia is indeed the contemporary of Origen, 
but he is also the disciple of Irenaeus. He tempers the 
idealism of the one with the moderate realism of the 
other ; and in his interpretations of prophecy, he is far 
too close a follower of the Bishop of Lyons. He has 
not the fertile originality of Origen. He is an indefati- 
gable compiler, who in the great cause at issue between 
Christianity and heresy, seeks rather to bring forward 
many documents and conclusive testimonies, than to 
establish his point by close argument. The scholar is 
more evident than the divine or the philosopher. He 
pleads before the tribunal of history rather than before 
that of conscience. He delights to trace the genealogy 
of the ideas which he is opposing, and when he has once 
proved the pagan origin of a heresy, he considers he 
has gained a decisive victory. This great importance 
attached to history, evidently excessive in an argu- 
mentative point of view, and weakening th~ force of 
the discussion of ideas on their own merits, gives 
an immense value of another kind to his works, 
since it makes them a treasury of documents directly 
bearing on Christian antiquity. If Hippolytus may 
be justly reproached with an undue love of tradi- 
tion, he nevertheless relies solely on the power of 
persuasion, and formally rejects the support of purely 
external authority in the conflict with heresy. "We 
* See note C, at the close of the Volume. 



364 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

use the weapons, not of force," he says, " but of 
the demonstration of the truth."* In fact, therefore, 
he had fully adopted the great apologetic method of 
Alexandria ; he believed in the profound harmony 
between the human soul and God ; he was, as he 
himself tells us, a merciful disciple of the Word, who 
is the friend of man.t 

We do not know on what ground Hippolytus 
received the name of the Bishop of the Nations ; but 
he had well merited it, if it embodied the recogni- 
tion of his noble and sympathetic concern for pagan 
humanity. In doctrine, Hippolytus is altogether a 
disciple of the school of Origen and Dionysius of 
Alexandria. He displays the same indefiniteness of 
formula combined with the same firmness in the faith. 
His book against heresies shows him equally opposed 
to hierarchical pretensions and doctrinal errors. Both 
were leagued against him in the violent controversy 
which he sustained with the Bishop Callisthus, of whose 
blameworthy life and intrigues he speaks with im- 
placable severity, and with a degree of passion which 
scarcely allows him to be an equitable judge. But it 
is a noble passion which moves him ; he is eager to 
maintain at once the holiness and liberty of the Church, 
and he is justly indignant with those who purchase 
accession to power by connivance at sin, and who were 
willing to sacrifice, for the sake of the new rights 
coveted by the priestly hierarchy, the severe rules of 
ancient discipline. We shall presently trace these 
internal conflicts of the Church of Rome, which had 
the effect of placing the power of the keys in the 
hands of the bishops, in a sense widely different from 

* Ov (3ia SiappqZavTeg, d\Xd jxov^) £dsyx({) a\r]9eias Svva/xsi diaXvcravreg. 

(" Philos.," 310.) t Ibid., 339. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 365 

that of the Gospel. In order to understand them, we 
must know all that had gone before and led to them. 
Let it suffice us now to say, that Hippolytus showed in 
these melancholy controversies an indomitable energy, 
not free from some admixture of roughness. He pro- 
tested vehemently against the unworthy proceedings of 
an ambitious and immoral bishop, who, after making- 
sure his election by canvassing for the suffrages of the 
heretics, sought to establish his power by showing a cul- 
pable leniency to evil. Hippolytus denounced him to 
the universal Church, stamping on his brow an inefface- 
able brand. His testimony, long stifled, is heard in our 
own day with as much force as in the time of Callisthus, 
reminding the Church that her liberty is lost only in 
the measure in which her holiness is compromised.* 

The Church of Rome would not have had leisure 
to give itself to internal discussions, if it had not been 
in the enjoyment of tranquillity, for which it was in- 
debted to the precarious favour of Heliogabalus, and the 
enlightened protection of Alexander Severus. With 
Maximinus, persecution recommenced. The same year 
in which Alexander Severus died, Hippolytus was sent 
into Sardinia with the Bishop Pontianus.t If we are 
to believe Prudentius, he was promptly recalled, but 

* Prudentius in his Hymn xi., Tlepi <jTe<pavu>v, preserved the 
memory of these painful discussions. He represented Hippolytus 
as a repentant Novatian. Hippolytus, who died between the years 
230 and 240, could not have belonged to a sect which only made 
its appearance in 245 ; but Prudentius in this statement only echoes 
a tradition based upon truth, which preserved the recollection of 
his opposition to the party dominant at Rome. 

+ We read in an ancient manuscript of the " Liber Pontificalis." 
Pontianus, ann. V., m. II, ; d. vii., fuit temporibus Alexandri. 
Eo tempore Pontianus episcopus et Ypolytus presbyter sunt 
deportati in Sardinia, Severo et Ouirilino coss. (235)." Evidently 
by " temporibus Alexandri " we must understand the last year of 
his reign, which was also the first of Maximinus the Thracian. 



366 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY, 

only to become a martyr.* His bones were carried 
to Rome, and placed, in the time of Constantine, 
beside the revered remains of St. Laurentius. The 
chapel reared to his honour always attracted, Prudentius 
tells us, a large concourse of people. It was probably 
at this period that the statue was erected to him, which 
is now to be seen in the Vatican, and which brings 
before our eyes the noble and austere form of a martyr 
bishop. The head is life-like, the brow broad, the 
expression full of firmness and fervour, and of that mys- 
tical illumination so striking in the rude sketches of the 
catacombs. We love to picture to ourselves, under such 
a form, the heroic champion of the Church's freedom, 
who combined, with a blameless deportment and iervent 
faith, depth of learning and breadth of thought. 

Shortly before Hippolytus, there lived at Rome a 
Christian theologian so closely resembling Hippolytus 
in spirit and doctrine, that the two have more than 
once been confounded. This was Caius, who was 
raised to the office of elder. t The most important 
event of his life was a conference with Proclus, one of 
the heads of the Montanist sect. He entered into the 
discussion with much energy,^ and made a memorial 
of it, in a writing which, according to Photius and St. 
Jerome, gained much repute. § Caius was led by his 
earnest repudiation of the views of the millenarians, 
to call in question the genuineness of the Revelation, 

* Prudentius, in the Hymn already quoted, represents the 
martyrdom of Hippolytus under fanciful colours. He makes him 
undergo the fate of the son of Theseus. Clearly the analogy of the 
names has led to a confusion between Christian legend and Greek 
mythology. (Bunsen, "Hippolytus," I. 158-161.) 

f ' Av))p (Kic\r)<na<jriic6c. (Eusebius, " H. E.," II. xxv.) 

I " Disputationem adversum Proculum Montani sectatorem 
valde insignem habuit." (St. Jerome, '' De Viris Illustr.," lix.) 

§ Photius, " Codex," xlviii. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 367 

which he ascribed to Cerinthus, who, he averred, had 
been artful enough to make it pass under the revered 
name of St. John. It was Caius, also, who first sug- 
gested the doubt whether the Epistle to the Hebrews 
was really written by St. Paul.* It follows from these 
few scattered hints, gathered from the history of the 
time, that Caius held remarkably liberal views in 
relation to ecclesiastical tradition, and was inclined 
strongly towards oriental idealism. Christian antiquity 
is still more meagre in details of the most distinguished 
apologist of the Church of Italy. Minucius Felix is 
known to us only by his famous dialogue. He had 
been an advocate before embracing Christianity, and 
we recognise in him a man practised in discussion. 
According to St. Jerome, he had gained much dis- 
tinction at the bar, previous to coming forward as the 
defender of Christianity, before a greater assemblage 
than any Roman forum, since his voice was to be heard 
throughout the whole world. t He does not treat his 
subject in so exalted a manner as Clement and Origen, 
but his book is admirably adapted to the ordinary calibre 
of mind. His " Octavius " is a conversation full of 
naturalness, of clearness, and of character, between two 
men of cultivation rather than of learning, who are 
not clothed in the philosopher's mantle, and do not 
discourse according to the rules of the schools. The 
charm of the dialogue consists mainly in the absence of 
all philosophical pretensions. There is no trace of a 
formal discussion ; it is simply the free interchange 
of thought between friends. Such was the treatment 
which religious questions might fairly expect in polite 

* " Epistolas Pauli tredecim tantum enumerat quartam quae 
fertur ad Hebraeos dicit non ejus esse." (St. Jerome, " De Viris 
Illustr.," lix.) 

t " Romse insignis causidieus." (Ibid , lv.) 



368 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

society, among men who knew and appreciated each 
other. The " Stromata " and the book "Contra 
Celsum," display, it is true, wealth of an altogether 
different kind, but this current apology has its value. 
The style of Minucius Felix is of a good school for his 
age ; it is simple and graphic. In its transparent 
fulness it exhibits a mind acute rather than profound, 
but luminous, exact, and strongly penetrated with the 
great truths of the Gospel. 

The Church of the North-west has only one name to 
contribute to the writers of this period— that of Victor, 
bishop in Pannonia, who, unskilled in the Latin tongue, 
wrote in a barbarous style, and with but moderate 
erudition, commentaries on several books of the Old 
Testament, and on the Revelation, as also a volume 
on heresies. He delights in all the puerilities of the 
symbolism of numbers. He died a martyr.* 

The intellectual activity of the Church of Rome was 
not proportioned to its importance. It may be said 
that the growth of the Church was owing to the absence 
of theological controversies. No question of religious 
philosophy came to distract its bishops from the care of 
its good government, and from the extension of their 
own authority. It is only just, however, to admit that 
its leaders were generally men of true metal, often 
narrow-minded, but always valiant at heart, ready to 
serve the Church either by life or death. The greater 
number of the bishops of Rome shed their blood for 
Christ, and thus earned to themselves the highest 
honour. Their martyrdom was to pave the way for 
their successors to ecclesiastical royalty, and the Church 



& a 



Victorinus Petavionensis Episcopus non aeque Latine ut 
Graece noverat. Unde opera ejus gradia sensibus viliore videntur 
compositione verborum." (St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," lxxiv.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 369 

of Rome thus advanced daily nearer to the end towards 
which it was impelled, alike by its own genius and 
by the circumstances of the age.* The list of Roman 
bishops commences under Commodus with the two least 
honourable names. We have already mentioned Zephy- 
rinus, in speaking of Origen's visit to Rome. He was 
an ignorant old man, of feeble mind, incapable of dis- 
criminating between truth and heresy, possessed with the 
greed of gain, and the docile instrument of the intrigues 
of Callisthus, formerly a slave. t He did nothing without 
the counsel of this cunning and crafty man, and fancied 
he was governing the Church, when in truth he was 
but the servile tool of another.^ Callisthus had been the 
slave of a pious and venerated man named Carpophorus, 
who belonged to the emperor's household. He early 
showed a restless, ambitious, and unscrupulous spirit. 
His master, relying on his honesty, and willing to turn 
his talents to account, confided to him a sum of money 
which he himself held in trust, to be used in some 
banking transactions. Callisthus' transactions were of 
a very simple kind : they consisted merely in the 
embezzlement of the funds with which he had been 
entrusted — funds which ought to have been doubly 
sacred to him, since they were the sole resources of 
widows and fatherless children, placed in his hands on 
the faith of his piety. || He appropriated the whole 
sum, says Hippolytus, and then found himself in 
difficulties. Some have tried to represent him as the 

* The principal authority, after Eusebius and Jerome, is the 
" Liber Pontificalis " of Anastatius. See also Lenain de Tille- 
mont, "Memoires," III. IV. ; Routh, " Reliq. Sacrae." 

t Ztcpvpivov apdpbs Idiwrov icai aiaxpoicepCovg. (" Philos.," 279,) 

J Ibid., 278-288. The following account is taken from the 
" Philosophoumena." 

|| 'O Se eZa<pavicrag to. iravTa ^7r6psi. (Ibid., 286.) 



370 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

unfortunate victim of a commercial speculation ; but if 
this had been the case, Callisthus would have been more 
open with Carpophorus, who was not a hard master, as 
is proved by the readiness with which he, in the end, 
released the defaulter. The bankrupt slave, burdened 
with an evil conscience, instead of giving any explana- 
tion of his conduct, took to flight. He hurried to the 
sea-coast, and embarked in a vessel ready to start. His 
master, following on his track, came on board the same 
ship. No sooner did Callisthus see him than he threw 
himself into the sea, preferring death to the shame of 
being retaken. He was with great difficulty rescued, 
and the evidence thus given of his guilty fear was 
unmistakable. Carpophorus laid upon him only the 
lenient punishment of making him grind in the mill. 
Callisthus soon contrived an ingenious method for 
recovering his liberty. He worked on the compassion 
of a number of Christians, and persuaded them that if 
he were released, he would be able to replace a part of 
the funds entrusted to him. Carpophorus yielded the 
more willingly to their intercessions, because he was 
himself most anxious to recover the moneys placed in 
the hands of his slave, and for which constant applica- 
tions were made to him. The hope proved a mere 
chimera. Callisthus knew better than anyone that the 
money received by him had been all squandered. Finding 
himself set at liberty, but kept under strict surveillance, 
he was in a fresh difficulty, from which he was at a loss 
how to escape.* The money was not forthcoming, the 
creditors were clamorous, the master would be relent- 
less. Callisthus felt himself a ruined man, but he 
endeavoured to give an honourable colouring to his 
misfortune. He devised a tragi-comic scene, which 

* '0 St firjStv 'ix^v a.7rodi56vai, rex vr l v davdrov 87rev6)](rt. (" Philos.," 287.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 371 

shows his consummate craftiness. He said to himself 
that if he could grasp the martyr's palm, that would 
shield him from dishonour. What did he do, therefore ? 
Under pretext of reclaiming some money from the Jews, 
whose mercantile vocation was already very marked, 
he repaired to their synagogue ; but as they owed 
him nothing, he had no claim to present. Instead 
of speaking of a debt which was purely imaginary, he 
began to use violent language, and entered into a hot 
and bitter controversy with them. He loudly pro- 
nounced the well-known watch-word : " I am a Chris- 
tian! " But this heroic saying fell discordantly from the 
lips of a false slave. When brought before the tribunal 
of the town prefect, he was quickly confounded by his 
master, who declared that this bold Christian, this 
aspirant after martyrdom, was nothing better than an 
unfaithful steward. The Jews, imagining that Carpo- 
phorus sought to save his servant by a subterfuge, re- 
iterated their accusations, and Callisthus was sentenced 
to work in the mines in Sardinia. Even there he gave 
proof of his inexhaustible cunning. Marcia, the mis- 
tress of Commodus, some time subsequently, asked 
Bishop Victor for a list of the Christian exiles in 
Sardinia, and obtained their pardon from the emperor. 
Naturally the name of Callisthus did not appear on this 
list, for a condemnation for theft could not be con- 
founded with the martyr's doom. Callisthus, however, 
so worked by tears and entreaties upon Hyacinth, a 
eunuch of the court of Commodus, who was charged 
with the mission of delivering the captives, that he 
got his name added to those inscribed on the roll of 
amnesty.* Bishop Victor was bitterly annoyed to see 

* '0 de yovvtrs.r6Jv /cat daKpuwv iKtrsvs /cat avrbg tvxsTv aTroXixruoQ. 
(" Philos.," 288.) 



$J2 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

him come back, but, being a merciful man, he left him 
in quiet, and to avoid the shame and scandal to which 
his appearance gave rise, sent him to live in the country 
on the bounty of the Church. There the favour of 
Bishop Zephyrinus sought him out, and he at once 
entered upon public life. It is evident that he was 
utterly unfit for the important functions now assigned to 
him. In the first place he was a man of no cultivation. 
He had not had time in his stormy life to make himself 
familiar with the great questions under consideration in 
the Church. He had not the true intuition of Christian 
feeling. He carried into the management of the affairs 
of the Church, the same bold and artful, subtle and 
intriguing spirit which he had manifested in the service 
of his old master ; he went about to betray the Divine 
Head of the Church as he had betrayed Carpophorus, 
and to deal falsely, not this time with a trust of money, 
but with the trust of doctrine and discipline. He was 
to be, not the good shepherd who gives his life for the 
sheep, but the mercenary who sells the flock for gain. 
Under Zephyrinus, whom he led at will, he had but one 
idea, but one aim — to ensure his own election to the 
episcopacy.* Hippolytus describes him in these indig- 
nant words : " He was a veritable magician, a cunning 
and perfidious seducer, who managed to bewitch with 
his sorceries many of the brethren, "t Having attained 
his ends, and entered into alliance with some oriental 
heretics, he endeavoured to extend widely the claims of 
the episcopate. We shall see how he succeeded when 
we come to describe the ecclesiastical revolutions of 
this period. Callisthus, according to the " Roman Mar- 
tyrology," died a martyr in the year 222. The question 

* Qrjpdj/xevog row tijq &7n<ricoTrr)g Qpovo, (" Philos.," 284.) 
f 'Hv ovv yorig. (Ibid., 289.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 373 

natui ally arises, how a bishop of Rome could have been 
put to death at this date, under the reign of Alexander 
Severus. The fact is not absolutely impossible, for 
perseeution never completely ceased, but the date 
named lends colour to a doubt of the truth of the 
story. 

We shall confine ourselves to the mere mention of 
the immediate successors of Callisthus — Urban and 
Pontianus. The latter was sent as an exile into 
Sardinia, with Hippolytus, under Maximinus, and 
there died. Antherus, who succeeded Pontianus, only 
just assumed the episcopal dignity, and was followed 
almost immediately by Fabian. According to the 
account of Eusebius, no one would have thought of 
nominating Fabian, if a dove, alighting on his head, 
had not seemed, as the organ of the Holy Ghost, to 
designate him to the office.* After his martyrdom, 
two great bishops presided in succession over the see 
of Rome. These were Cornelius and Stephen. The 
former, who rose gradually to the episcopate by all 
the ascending steps of the hierarchy, maintained a 
vigorous conflict with the Novatians ; he had them 
condemned in a great synod, and denounced them in 
his letters addressed to the various Churches. He 
died an exile and a martyr, honoured by the lamenta- 
tions and by the tribute of Cyprian. f The latter, after 
acting in harmony with the Bishop of Carthage, came 
to a difference with him on the question of the baptism 
of heretics. Stephen was on the point of taking mea- 
sures which would have violently agitated the Church, 
when he was thrown into prison. His cell became a 
sanctuary, for there he courageously celebrated divine 
service. He was succeeded after his death by Sixtus, 

* Eusebius, " H. E.," VII. xxix. f Cyprian, " Epist," lii.-lvir. 



374 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

who had been his deacon, and to whose charge he 
had committed the treasures of the Church. Sixtus 
trod in his footsteps both in the false assumption of 
authority and in heroic fidelity. He was put to death 
in the Cemetery of Callisthus, in which he had taken 
refuge.* Dionysius, who succeeded him, is known 
only by his polemics against Dionysius of Alexandria, 
with reference to Sabellianism.t The other Bishops of 
Rome during this period have left no mark in his- 
tory. They all laboured, however, with equal patience 
and skill, for the establishment and extension of 
their power. It is not necessary to suppose them 
actuated by vulgar ambition ; they merely obeyed 
the instincts of their race, and followed the current of 
their age. 



§ II. Tertullian. 

We have alluded, when speaking of the history of 
missions at this period, to the peculiar character of the 
people who inhabited ancient Carthage . at the com- 
mencement of our era. Rude in nature, under the 
semblance of a polished civilisation ; greedy of sensual 
gratifications, superstitious to an excess, infatuated 
with the arts of magic, and uniting to these barbarous 
tendencies a keen relish for inflated and pretentious 
rhetoric, such as is ever popular in an age of social 
decline, this people seemed destined to be one of the 
last strongholds of paganism. Christianity, neverthe- 
less, effected a wide entrance among them ; nowhere 
had it so rapidly won so many adherents, but neither 
had it anywhere else found so much difficulty in com- 

* " Liber Pontif.," xxiv. f Cyprian, " Epist," lxxxii. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 375 

pletely assimilating its rapid conquests. The African 
nationality set its strong stamp upon the Church 
planted on this burning soil, where it seemed that all 
nature must assume a quick and almost passionate 
development. This very nationality, however, gave to 
Christianity its most eloquent defender, in whom the 
intense vehemence, the untempered ardour of the race, 
appear purified indeed, but not subdued. No influence 
in the early ages could equal that of Tertullian ; 
and his writings breathe a spirit of such undying 
power that they can never grow old, and even now 
render living, controversies which have been silent 
for fifteen centuries. We must seek the man in his 
own pages, still aglow with his enthusiasm and quiver- 
ing with his passion, for the details of his personal 
history are very few. The man is, as it were, absorbed 
in the writer, and we can well understand it, for his 
writings embody his whole soul. Never did a man 
more fully infuse his entire moral life into his books, 
and act through his words.* 

Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, born in 
Carthage in the year 160, was the son of a centurion 
of the proconsul of that city.t He belonged therefore 
to that middle rank of life which compelled him to 
labour, but which left him the choice of a vocation. 
Gifted with a brilliant imagination, an intellect at once 
powerful and pliant, X he was a born orator. He was 

* Beside the works of Tertullian, see St. Jerome, "De Viris 
Illustr.," cliv. ; Vincent de Lerins, " Commonitorium," I. xxiv. ; 
Lenain de Tillemont, " Memoires," III, 196; Neander, " Antig- 
nosticus. Geist des Tertullianus" (Berlin, 1849); Bcehringer, "Die 
Kirche Christi," I. 270. Consult especially Tertullian's writings, 

t " Patre centurione proconsulari." (St. Jerome, " De Viris 
Illustr., 5 ' liii.) 

J " Hie acris et vehementis ingenii." (Ibid.) 



376 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

thus led to embrace the profession of a pleader.* He 
retained through life a power of close, consecutive, 
forcible argument, pushing his reasonings to their 
farthest logical consequences, and sometimes even 
beyond. The golden days of the forum were over. 
The magistracy had become degraded, like all other in- 
stitutions, under an oppressive government. The spirit 
of liberty, sometimes tumultuous, but healthful even 
in its violence, no longer animated the speech of the 
orators. All was sacrificed to effective form ; the 
rhetoricians were the rulers of the day. Carthage did 
not compensate, as Alexandria did, defects of form by 
the wealth of philosophic thought. All that it de- 
manded of its orators was a profusion of images, and 
perpetual variety in the colouring of their harangues. 
It cared only for adornment, and was charmed, like a 
savage or a child, with mere kaleidoscopic effect. The 
nearest approach to barbarism is the refinement of a 
people, to whom the noble interests of freedom and of 
thought are but matters of scorn. Tertullian had not, 
therefore, like the great Alexandrian doctors, the pri- 
vilege of listening to earnest philosophic teaching. He 
had no other masters than those rhetorical jugglers, 
who, like Apolinus, took the place of the rope-dancers 
in the same arena on which they used to give their per- 
formances. No one felt the transition an abrupt one, 
for there was not the vestige of an idea or a sentiment 
expressed in the florid and pretentious discourses de- 
livered in the public place of concourse. Tertullian 
would have perhaps become the most dazzling of these 

"* Tovg PiofiaiiDv vofiovq ->}icpif3u>K<jjQ dvrjp. (Eusebius, " H. E.," II. ii.) 
We must not confound the ecclesiastical writer of whom men- 
tion is made in the " Pandectes," with Tertullian. Their style 
is totally diverse. (Neander, " Antignosticus," 8.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 377 

literary necromancers, if he had not embraced a faith 
which converted speech into the sword of the warrior, 
and made the orator a witness and often a martyr. It 
is certain that during this early period of his life, he 
amassed a great store of knowledge not connected with 
the science of law. His writings show very extensive, 
if rather discursive erudition. It is evident that he 
read much, but rapidly; with classical literature he 
w r as not very familiar, and rarely borrowed from it. 
With his turn of mind, he could have little relish for 
the noble simplicity of Homer or Sophocles. Nor 
does he appear to have deeply studied the great phi- 
losophers of Greece. He confounds all their systems 
under one common anathema ; he takes them in a 
mass, and makes no distinction between their various 
schools. He was able, however, to read them in their 
own language ; he knew Greek well enough to w r rite it 
easily, from which we may infer that in his youth he 
had acquired all the culture open to the student of his 
day in Carthage.* 

He wrote, before his conversion, a treatise on the 
difficulties of marriage. " When he w r as still young," 
says Jerome, " he played upon this subject." The 
expression is fair and naif, showing how Tertullian 
exhibited at this period the frivolity habitual to the 
African rhetorician, to w r hom the gravest questions 
were but matters of jest.t 

Bad taste in literature was not the worst feature of 
the paganism of the Decline. At Carthage, in particular, 
corruption of manners had reached the last extreme. 

* He tells us that he had written works in Greek : " De isto 
jam nobis in Grasco digestum est." (" De Baptismo," xv.) 

f " Quum adhuc erat adolescens lusit in hac materia." (Hieron., 
" Adv. Iovin.," I. xiii.) 

25 



378 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The climate, the ancient traditions of an oriental re- 
ligion, the subversion of old faiths, the degradation 
of slavery — all tended to aggravate it, and Carthage 
was the Corinth of Africa, a Corinth even more utterly 
corrupt than the Grecian, because lacking even that 
superficial polish of elegance and grace which the 
Hellenic race never entirely lost. The young pleader, 
who acknowledged no moral restraint, and owned no 
laws but those of euphonious speech, yielded to all 
the seductive influences of his time. He himself 
tells us that he had plunged deep into debauch, and 
signalised himself by his excesses.* He had, doubt- 
less, in memory this sad phase of his own life when 
he depicted adultery in such flaming characters, and 
represented it as the foulest form of crime, asso- 
ciated in the prohibitions of the law of God with 
idolatry and homicide, which are, in fact, almost 
always its necessary companions. t With unshrinking 
boldness, Tertullian lifted up his voice against this 
accursed fraternity. He thus speaks in the name 
of idolatry, of which he knew so w T ell the fatally cor- 
rupting influence upon the moral character : " I — 
idolatry — have furnished adultery with most abundant 
occasions. My groves, my high places, my sacred 
streams, and my very temples in your cities know this 

* " Ego me scio neque alia carne adulteria commississe neque 
nunc alia carne ad continentiarn eniti." (" De Resurrectione Carnis," 
5 1 ) The word adultery must be taken in a very wide accepta- 
tion. Tertullian. in his treatise on Modesty, applies it to every 
guilty liaison, as is evident from the following passage: " Ubicunque 
vel in quamcunque semetipsum adulterat et stuprat, qui aliter 
quam nuptiis utitur." (" De Pudicitia," iv.) " Peccator mei 
similis (imo me minor), ego enim praestantiam in delictis meam 
agnosco." (" De Pcenit.," iv.) 

f " Inter duos apices facinorum eminentissimos sine dubio digna 
consedit." (Ibid., v.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 379 

well !"* Tertullian might have added : " My infamous 
places of amusement know it also." Experience had 
taught him that the circus and the theatre were 
the school of all evils, and he is unquestionably 
recalling the memories of his own early days, when 
he describes the fatal influence exerted by them over 
the souls of the spectators. He knew experimentally 
that they were as the very sanctuaries of infamy, t 
and that the most attractive representations were 
those most strongly suggestive of adultery and sin. 
He had himself breathed that tainted atmosphere, 
and would fain warn his brothers against the same 
pollution. 

In the midst of this dissolute life, the young pagan 
carried concealed under the smooth exterior of a world- 
ling of the age, a secret uneasiness, an incurable wound. 
What but his own conscience could have been speaking 
to him before his conversion, with that Divine voice 
which renders to truth a testimony so much the more 
precious that it is spontaneous, and which he afterwards 
so justly called the witness of the naturally Christian 
soul ? He had then felt so strongly, as distinctly to 
remember them, the fear of death and of judgment, the 
dread of the powers of darkness, the need of a Divine 
protection, the imperious yearning for another existence 
after this earthly life, — all those experiences, in truth, 
which are the voices of the spirit calling for Christ, and 
which he was to analyse with so much discrimination in 
the sublime pages of his works. J We have no detailed 
account of his conversion to Christianity. We may 

* " Sciant luci mei et montes et vivae aquae ipsaque in urbibus 
templa." (" De Pcenit.," v.) 

t " Privatum consistorium impudicitiae." (" De Spectac," xvii.) 
X " Testimonium Animae," vi. 



380 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

infer, however, from a sort of abruptness characterising 
his religious creed, that he was not led to embrace it 
by slow and long research. He seems to have been 
snatched as it were at once from the life of paganism 
to a life in Christ. He did not rise, like Clement and 
Justin, by the study of ancient philosophy, to the lowest 
step of the temple, to that earnest attitude of mind 
which can never be a substitute for revelation, but 
which is at least a preparation for its reception. The 
change in Tertullian must have been almost instanta- 
neous. 

We should be much inclined to think that the spec- 
tacle of the martyrs going courageously and joyfully to 
meet death, produced upon him the deep impression he 
has himself described, and that the first influence 
operating upon his heart, was the holy contagion 
of a heroic devotedness. Be this as it may, he 
entered upon his new career with all the impetuosity of 
his nature, and from the day when he put his hand to 
the plough, in the field watered with so much blood, he 
never cast one glance backward. He thought of the 
things which were behind only as things accursed, and 
pressed forward with all his powers towards the mark 
he had set before him. He trampled under foot, 
without remorse, everything which came between him 
and his aspirations, whether the interposing obstacle 
was, as at one time, paganism with its pomps and 
glories, or, as at another, the ecclesiastical forms of 
his day, when these seemed to him to fail of their true 
purpose. He was ever ready to avow that the impos- 
sible alone was worth aiming at. He shared, therefore,, 
the lot of all such ardent and aspiring spirits ; he never 
knew repose ; his hand was ever against every man. 
His life was one long struggle, first with himself, then 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 381 

with every influence opposed to his own views, or 
differing only from his by greater moderation. To him 
moderation in anything was impossible ; he went to 
extremes both in hatred and love, both in language and 
thought ; but every act and word was the result of deep 
conviction, and was animated by that which alone can 
give vitality to the efforts of any human spirit — a sincere 
and earnest passion for truth. Even the excess of his 
vehemence gave him an element of power, for it com- 
manded the service of a fiery eloquence. His whole 
character is summed up in the one word, passion — 
passion made to subserve the holiest of causes, pure 
from all petty ambition, but constantly betraying itself 
into harshness and injustice towards others. " Mis- 
erable man that I am," he exclaims, "ever consumed 
with the fire of impatience !"* This ejaculation truly 
expresses the man, in all the excessive strength of his 
feelings, and no less in the admirable humility which 
made him ask in so touching a manner for the prayers 
of his readers. t 

The passion by which he is constantly impelled gives 
us the true key to his character as a writer ; it enables 
us to understand both his defects and his excellencies. 
It would be vain to look for a just balance of thought 
in such a man; he must inevitably attach himself exclu- 
sively now to one side, now to another ; one day he 
will be a champion of Church authority, another, he 
will push independence to its utmost bounds. We shall 
not expect to find in him the breadth of spirit, which 
is always accompanied with a degree of indulgence, 

* Miserrimus ego, semper asger caloribus impatientiae." (De 
Patientia," i.) 

f " Tantum oro ut cum petitis, etiam Tertulliani peccatoris memi- 
neritis." (" De Baptismo," xx.) 



382 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

because it is capable of comprehending even those to 
whom it is opposed, and of discerning the points of 
possible conciliation. Such a man as Tertullian will 
always and everywhere see only salient contrasts, and 
will invariably give prominence to the points of differ- 
ence between his own views and the systems or opinions 
with which he is in conflict. He will be less a 
metaphysician than a dialectician. Dialectics will be, 
in his hands, a formidable weapon of offence, a terrible 
instrument with which he will both make and widen 
wounds. If he chooses to restrict himself within a 
limited field, he will dig and delve into its most hidden 
depths. " The truth," he says, "lies not on the surface 
of things, but in their substance, and is most often the 
opposite of that which superficially appears."* Thus 
concentrated, his zeal burns but the more fiercely; 
he not only grasps an idea, he strains it with all 
his force, and often demands from it more than it is 
able to give. The style is the man, it has been said; 
and these words are emphatically true of Tertullian. 
His st)le is in fact the exact expression of his soul; 
it is strong even to hardness ; it is strained, incorrect, 
African, but irresistible. It is poured forth like lava 
from an inward furnace, kept ever at white heat, and 
the track of light it leaves is a track of fire too. It 
abounds in bold and splendid images, but there is 
nothing gentle or joyous in its brilliancy ; it is not the 
calm brightness of the sun ; it is the strange, lurid fire 
which wreathes round the summit of the volcano, and 
rises in red smoke. The language of Tertullian is full 
of sharp and abrupt antitheses, like those which charac- 
terise his thoughts. Two hostile worlds appear in 

* " Veritas non in superficie est, sed in medullis." (" De Resur- 
rectione Carnis," iii.j 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 383 

constant collision alike in his words and in his ideas; it 
is war to the death — a fierce and tumultuous struggle 
between the pagan or heretical idea and the Christian. 
In every phrase one might seem to hear the sharp 
clash of swords that meet and cross, and the spark 
which dazzles us is struck from the ringing steel. 
Hence that incomparable eloquence, which, in spite 
of sophisms and exaggerated metaphors, ravishes and 
rules us still. 

We have already given numerous examples of Ter- 
tullian's style, and we shall have frequent occasion 
to multiply such instances in the course of this history, 
for it is impossible to cite any lines of his which do 
not clearly show the impress, the fervid force of his 
genius. 

We have but few details of the life of Tertullian 
after his conversion. We know only that he was raised 
to the dignity of priest in the Church of Carthage.* 
St. Jerome speaks of him under this title, and he 
himself appears to assume it in many of his writings. 
He was married ; and we possess two letters written 
by him to his wife. If he seems occasionally to 
recognise the beauty of the institution of marriage, 
he nevertheless carries the ascetic tendency so far as 
to do injustice to the high mission of Christian parents. 
He cannot understand the desire for children, not only 
on account of the peril of their souls, but also in 
the consideration of the pains they will cost', and the 
bitterness sure to mingle with the happiness they bring, 
as if these very pains and agonies, borne by a love 
of deep devotion, were not the highest hallowing of 

* " Tertullianus presbyter." (St. Jerome, " DeViris Illustr./' liii ) 
He clearly does not reckon himself among the laity. (" De 
Anima," ix.) 



384 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the parent and child-life.* This monastic trait is 
thoroughly in harmony with the general views enter- 
tained by Tertullian of human life. With his loins 
girt about and his lamp burning, he awaits, with 
irrepressible impatience, the solemn moment which 
shall close the present and inaugurate the glorious 
future. " The end of time," he says, " is at hand for 
us." He believes himself ever standing on the verge 
of the last judgment ; he earnestly yearns for it, and 
anticipates its decisions. He exhibits, therefore, the 
most profound contempt for all that men of the age 
covet, for all that might sink deeper in the sand the 
tabernacle so soon to be taken down. Such a dis- 
position needed but to be developed to make him an 
ardent Montanist. His adherence to that heresy is 
the great event of his life, an event which divides 
his moral history into two parts, and the preparation 
and results of which we shall have now to trace in his 
numerous writings, without, however, entering on a 
detailed exposition of his theological system, which 
would here be out of place. 

His first writing is a letter to the martyrs* or rather 
to the Christians, who were in prison awaiting their 
final doom. In this letter he exhibits that ardent 
yearning for the life to come, and that contempt for the 
present age, which never forsook him. To him, the 
poisonous dungeon into which the captives were cast 
seemed less of a prison than the great world with its 
hollow show and subtle snares. One passage of this 
letter lets us read the very heart of the author; it is 
that in which he congratulates the martyrs on escaping 
the saddening and sickening spectacle of the infamies 
of pagan society. " You have not the false gods before 
* " Liberorum amarissima voluptate." ("Ad Uxor.," v.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 385 

your eyes," he said ; " you have not to pass before 
their statues; you need not participate by your presence 
in pagan feasts ; you are spared the pain of inhaling 
the breath of impure incense ; your ears are not offended 
with the clamorous sounds issuing from the theatres, 
nor your souls vexed by the cruelty, the madness, the 
vileness of those who perform their parts there ; your 
eyes are not polluted by the scenes witnessed in haunts 
of vice and prostitution."* 

These strong expressions mark the grief and indigna- 
tion which filled the soul of Tertullian, as he witnessed 
at every step taken along the streets of Carthage, fresh 
proofs of the accursed influence of paganism. We 
trace the same emotions in his treatise on the Spectacles, 
which is of the same date. It was probably composed 
on the occasion of the solemn games celebrated in 
honour of the triumph of Septimus Severus over his 
rivals. These great representations, provided by a 
victorious emperor to gratify public curiosity, were 
very brilliant, and highly attractive to the masses. 
The Christians brought out of paganism found it hard 
to go against a torrent which carried the whole popula- 
tion of Carthage in a body to the circus. The very 
recollection of such scenes in the past was fraught 
with temptation. Tertullian, like a vigilant sentinel, 
uttered his cry of alarm in his treatise on the Spec- 
tacles. He naturally regards them with extreme 
severity. We shall here cite his peroration, which 
exhibits all the great qualities of his eloquence. Re- 
plying to the objection that it must be lawful to have 
some enjoyment in life, he exclaims, addressing himself 

* " Non vides alienos deos, non nidoribus spurcis verberaris, non 
clamoribus spectaculorum, atrocitate vel furore, vel impudicitia 
celebrantium cosderis." ("Ad Martyr.," ii.) 



386 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to the Christian : " Art thou, then, so ungrateful as not 
to acknowledge the many and great joys with which 
thy God has enriched thee, and not to be grateful for 
them ? What can be sweeter than the pardon of God, 
our Father and our Lord, or than the revelation of truth ? 
. . . Is there a greater luxury for the soul than to 
despise luxury, to despise the present age, to possess true 
liberty, a clear conscience, a life which satisfies, and 
which is no longer troubled with the fear of death, and 
to trample under foot the false gods of the nations ? 
. . . These are the delights of Christians ; these the 
spectacles, holy, eternal, free, on which their eyes may 
feast."* Then, drawing a striking contrast between 
these sublime enjoyments and the amusements of the 
circus, Tertullian describes the Christian himself as 
the athlete, who, rising up at the signal from God and 
at the sound of the angelic trumpet, goes forth to win 
the palm of martyrdom. t "Wilt thou have wrestlings, 
combats ? They are at thy command, as great and 
as many as thou wilt. Behold sensuality subdued by 
chastity, perfidy vanquished by good faith, cruelty 
giving place to mercy, and pride cast into the shade by 
humility. Such are the victories which win the crown 
for us. Wilt thou have blood ? Hast thou not the 
blood of Christ ?"J 

Yet more exalted joys await the Christian in the 
future. Tertullian lavishes his brilliant and powerful 
colours on the canvas in the representation of the great 

* " Quid enim jucundius, quam Dei patris et Domini recon- 
ciliatio, quae major voluptas quam fastidium ipsius voluptatis, 
quam seculi totius contemptus, quam vita sufficiens, quod calcas 
deos nationum ?" (" De Spectac," xxix.) 

f " Ad signum Dei suscitare, ad tubam angeli erigere, ad 
martyrii palmas gloriare." (Ibid.) 

$ "Vis et pugillatus et luctatus ? prassto sunt, non parva sed 
multa. Vis autem et sanguinis aliquid ? Habes Christi." (Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 38/ 

day of final judgment. He carries his readers into the 
midst of that august assembly ; he himself takes part 
in its transactions ; he gives his deposition as a witness 
before the bar of the Almighty ; he triumphs over his 
adversaries, and the cry of satisfied vengeance blends 
with his hymn of praise and adoration. The day of 
wrath, wmich is to abase the present age in the dust 
while it exalts the glory of Christ, is the day for which 
Tertullian impatiently waits. From these powerful 
pages of his, the inspiration of the Dies Iycb was doubt- 
less first derived. 

" Oh, what a spectacle," he exclaims, " will be that 
gloriously triumphant return of Christ, so surely pro- 
mised and so near ! What will be the exultation of 
the angels ! what the glory of the risen saints ! Their 
reign will begin, and a new Jerusalem arise. Then 
will come the closing scene — the dawning of the great 
day of judgment, to the confusion of the nations who 
scoffed at it and looked not for it ; that day which with 
one devouring flame will destroy the old world with all 
its works.* Oh, glorious spectacle ! How I shall 
admire, how I shall laugh, how will my joy be magnified 
in seeing so many kings whom the apotheosis of men 
had exalted to heaven, cast down into the lowest deeps 
with Jupiter and his witnesses ; in beholding the 
judges, who have persecuted the name of Christ, de- 
voured by a more terrific fire than that into which 
they cast the Christians. What a spectacle will be that 
of the philosophers confounded in presence of their dis- 
ciples, who will be consumed with them, because' they 
believed on their word that God cared not for us, and 

* " Ille ultimus judicii dies, ille nationibus insperatus, ille 
derisus." (" De Spectac.," xxx.) 

f " Quid videam, ubi gaudeam, ubi exsultem." (Ibid.) 



388 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

that the soul was nothing, or, at most, was reserved for 
a course of transmigration! What shall we say of 
those lying poets who shall be dragged, not before 
Rhadamantos or Minos, but who shall stand white 
with terror before the tribunal of the Christ in whom 
they believed not ?* But most of all my gaze will be 
riveted upon the murderers of Christ. ' Behold,' I 
will say to them, ' the carpenter's son, born of a woman 
of low estate, the Sabbath-breaker, the Samaritan, the 
demoniac !t Behold Him ! This is He ! this is He 
whom you bought of Judas for thirty pieces of silver, 
whom you smote with the reed and spat upon, 
whose face you marred, and to whom you gave vinegar 
to drink.' . . . And in order that I may see such 
things, and feast my eyes on such spectacles, what 
need shall I have of your liberality, praetors or consuls, 
quaestors, or priests of the false gods ? Faith grants 
us to enjoy them even now, by lively anticipation ; but 
what shall the reality be of those things which eye 
hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into 
the heart of man to conceive ? They may well com- 
pensate, surely, the circus and both amphitheatres and 
all the spectacles the world can offer." 

This joy in the anticipation of the doom of the 
enemies of Christ is altogether alien to the spirit of 
the Gospel ; that mocking laugh, ringing across the 
abyss which opens to swallow up the persecutors ; this 
cruel irony over the most fearful woes, — all these fiery 
characters on the page, are evidences of Tertullian's 
passionate attachment to the cause of Christianity, 
and also of his intense hatred of everything opposed to 

* "Adinopinati Christi tribunal palpitantes." ("DeSpectac./'xxx.) 
f " Hie est ille, dicam, fabri aut quaistuarise films, Sabbati de- 
structor, Samarites et demonium habens." (Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 389 

it. The last judgment is, in his view, the carrying out 
of a just and terrible retaliation. A tooth for a tooth, 
an eye for an eye, torture for torture, eternal punish- 1 
ment for the persecutors of the Church — such was his 
expectation and his hope. Feelings like these cannot 
be quiescent. Tertullian anticipates the bitter ven- 
geance to be taken in the last day upon his enemies, 
by mocking and trampling on them in the- time present. 
Hence the implacable, cutting, sardonic tone of his 
apologetic writings. He does not, like Justin or 
Clement of Alexandria, seek to trace in paganism a 
dim preparation for Christianity. He takes the axe of 
John the Baptist, and lays it at the root of the tree, 
with the full intention to cut it down and consume 
it utterly. He is strongly aggressive, and scorns 
all oratorical rules. We shall see presently how he 
demonstrated the truth of Christianity. We confine 
ourselves now to noting his modes of argument, so far 
as these serve to bring before us the marked indi- 
viduality of the man. He aims, not to persuade, but to 
strike down and to confound. His great Apology, of 
which we have the first rough outline in his treatise 
addressed to the Nations, and which he corrected and 
completed on the occasion of the persecution under 
Septimus Severus, is rather a proud challenge to 
the pagan world than the pleading of a cause. We 
have analysed what may be called its judicial portion, 
that which deals with legal discussions before pagan 
tribunals. We have noted its sarcastic and angry 
tone. Tertullian is never satisfied with defending 
himself ; he always makes a raid on the ground of his 
adversary, boldly attacking his beliefs and mercilessly 
ridiculing them. He has an inexhaustible fund of 
mockery for the great Olympic gods in whose names 



390 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the Christians are sacrificed. He shows the pagan 
hell peopled with parricides, with the incestuous, 
seducers, murderers, thieves; "in fine," he adds, "by 
men who bear the likeness of some one of your gods."* 
He delights to exhibit the shame of these gods ; he 
despoils the idol of its ornaments, and shows how it 
was first carved for money by some rude workman, and 
then sold in the market. He openly scoffs at the im- 
potence of these pretended protectors of cities, who 
suffer them to be pillaged and burnt, unheeded and 
unaided. He asks where Jupiter was hidden when his 
island of Crete was conquered, and what Juno was doing 
when Carthage was made to bow under a foreign yoke ? 
He draws a very humorous picture of the priests of 
Cybele mutilating themselves frightfully in order to 
obtain the recovery of Marcus Aurelius, when that 
emperor had already been dead for several days. " O 
tardy despatches !" he exclaims, " which did not make 
Cybele sooner informed of this event. In truth, the 
Christians may well laugh in their turn at such a 
god.t" The heroes of pagan story are ridiculed no 
less than the Olympian gods. Tertullian asks what 
title iEneas can establish to his exalted rank, except 
that of having crept away like a deserter from the 
battle? He is as severe upon philosophy as upon 
idolatry. After a detailed enumeration of the vices of 
the most illustrious sages of antiquity, he exclaims 
ironically, " O ancient wisdom ! O Roman gravity ! " X 
He bitterly satirises the prudence of those freethinkers, 
who, by performing certain genuflexions before the idols, 

* " Quicumque similes sunt alicujus dei vestri." (" Apologia," xi.) 
t " O nuntios tardos." (Ibid., xxv.) 

I " O sapientiae Atticas ! O Romansegravitatis exemplum ! " (Ibid., 
xxxix.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 39I 

purchased the right to laugh at them in private. After 
describing the infamies of pagan life, he speaks thus 
boldly of those who, while drawing down the anger of 
God upon the earth by their crimes, impute to the 
Christians the scourges by which the land is desolated, 
" It is you who cumber the world, and are the cause 
of all the public calamities and woes." If such an 
apology was wanting in the gentleness which persuades, 
it displayed in the highest degree the force which 
subjugates, and sometimes attracts, even noble natures 
by its manly vigour. Those whom it did not irritate, 
it convinced, and more than one soul of stoic temper 
relished the acrimony of its tone. 

A short time after his Apology, Tertullian wrote 
one of his best treatises, that which he himself 
entitled, " The Testimony of the naturally Christian 
Soul." He endeavoured to show that the religion of 
Jesus Christ responds to the truest aspirations of our 
moral being, to those, that is, which find the most 
purely spontaneous expression. It would be far from 
the truth to suppose that Tertullian, in this treatise, 
took at all the same ground as the Alexandrine apo- 
logists, or attempted any sort of reconciliation between 
revelation and philosophy. On the contrary, it gives 
evidence of his unvarying hostility to all the ancient 
culture. He protests against pagan science in the 
name of nature, and appeals from the doctrines of the 
wise men to the human soul, as he describes it in its 
rude and uncultured state. He opposes the testimony 
of the public square to that of the school. He thus 
adheres faithfully to his own views, even in the 
employment of an apologetic method, which, fairly 
followed, should have led him to a juster judgment 
of the philosophy of Greece, since this too was a 



392 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

revelation of one of those immortal needs of the human 
soul, to which he made his appeal. We only make 
passing mention of this treatise, in which we shall 
presently trace the essential idea of his Apology. 

Of the strictly theological writings of this period, 
we mention only the treatise, " De Praescriptione," 
a dangerous weapon, which Tertullian left in the 
hands of the ecclesiastical authorities, even after he 
had deserted their party. He shows himself, in this 
writing, as intolerant of heresy as he had elsewhere 
shown himself of philosophy. He even denies the right 
of the heretics to free discussion of their opinions, 
and closes their mouths at once, by a decision allowing 
of no appeal. This treatise, which is of importance 
for the influence it exerted on the formation of a 
positive tradition, is a new proof of the vehemence 
of Tertullian's character, which never suffered him to 
think with moderation. The conclusion of what may 
be called the exposition of principles, deserves to be 
quoted. The heretics, he holds, must be without 
excuse unless Christ has given the most flagrant 
contradiction to Himself; and to make apparent the 
absurdity and irreverence of such a supposition, he 
puts into the mouth of the Divine Master such words 
of retractation as could alone justify heresy. He makes 
Him thus speak : " I promised the resurrection, even 
the resurrection of the body ; but I have found that 
I shall not be able to accomplish it. I declared myself 
born of a virgin ; but that has since seemed to me a 
reproach.* I called Him my Father who sends the sun 
and the rain ; but I have found a better father, who 
has adopted me. I forbade you to lend an ear to heresy ; 

* " Natum me ostenderam ex virgine, sed postea turpe visum 
QSt." (" De Prescript.," xliv.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 393 

but I was wrong." * Such was the use to which Ter- 
tullian turned his powers of irony. 

If he occupied himself but little with theology during 
the earlier period of his Christian life, he nevertheless 
wrote several treatises on Christian morality, marked by 
his accustomed earnestness and exaggeration of style, 
and revealing to us his inner feelings. The treatise 
on Penitence, while it contains more than one grave 
error, and arbitrarily imposes limitations on the Divine 
mere}', refusing pardon to those who fall repeatedly, 
shows us Tertullian's deep, horror of evil, which he 
tracks under its several subtle disguises and into those 
most secret hiding-places, where it exists as yet only as 
an unlawful thought and desire. These pages seem to 
be themselves wet with the tears of true repentance. 
" Penitence is our life, for it ia the great antidote of 
death. O sinner, such a one as I am, or rather less 
guilty than I, who am myself the chief of sinners, 
embrace repentance, cling to it as . the shipwrecked 
man clings to the plank which saves him. It will 
raise thee above those floods of sin which engulf thee, 
and will bring thee into the port of Divine mercy. 
Seize the opportunity of an unhoped-for blessedness." t 
Tertullian initiates us into his own inward struggles 
in the following passage: "Our deadly foe slumbers 
not in his hatred. Never does he display it more 
actively than when a man is about to escape him 
altogether. His malice is fanned to a flame by that 
which had seemed to quench it. He cannot but 
grieve and groan to see so many sins pardoned, so 
many works of death destroyed, so many grounds of 

* " Sed erravi." (" De Praescript.," xliv.) 

f Ita invade, ita amplexare, ut naufragus alicujus tabulae fidem/' 
(" De Poenit.," iv.) 

26 



394 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

accusation annulled. He quivers with rage to think 
that this sinner, now become a servant of Christ, will 
judge him and his angels. Therefore he watches, at- 
tacks, harasses him, striving to defile his soul by some 
fleshly concupiscence, to enslave it by the fetters 
of the age, to overthrow his faith by the fear of some 
earthly power, or to lead him astray into the paths of 
heresy. He besets him all around with snares and 
pitfalls." * 

We have already indicated what would be the 
stongest temptation to a man of the temper of Ter- 
tullian — the indulgence of passion, constant irritation, 
and anger. His writing on Patience denotes a sincere 
desire to guard against a vehemence which he was 
never able wholly to subdue. " I am like the sick," he 
says, " who, just because they are deprived of health, 
are always dwelling on its blessings. God grant that 
the shame of not practising that which I commend to 
others, may lead me to its realisation. "t After thus 
humbling himself, Tertullian utters the most splendid 
eulogium on Patience, and concludes by thus tracing 
the portrait of this grace in highly poetical lines : 
" Her face," he says, " is tranquil and serene, her 
forehead pure, and unfurrowed by one line of sadness 
or anger ; X her eyebrows are slightly raised in token 
of joy ; she droops her eyes, not in sorrow but in 
humility ; a dignified silence seals her lips, the hue of 
her countenance is that of innocence and security. 
She defies the devil, and he trembles at her smile. 



* " Observat oppugnat, obsidet." (" De Poenit.," vii.) 

+ " Vice languentium, qui cum vacenit a sanitate, de bonis ejus 

tacere non norunt." (" De Patientia.," i.) 

X " Vultus illi tranquillus et placidus, frons pura, nulla mseroris 

aut iras rugositate contracta." (Ibid., xv.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 395 

White is the robe which falls across her breast and 
enwraps her form ; it neither heaves nor throbs 
tumultuously. She is seated on the throne of a mind 
full of quietness and peace, which is ruffled by no 
storm, shadowed by no cloud, which is like the calm 
and open heaven of blue, which Elias saw in his third 
vision." * 

Strange paradox ! Tertullian, even while thus ex- 
tolling the beauty of Patience, indulges in reflections 
of an entirely opposite tendency : he regards Patience 
as a sort of refined vengeance visiting the enemies 
of the Church. " Every offence, whether in words 
or deeds, will break against Patience like an arrow 
darted at a wall of solid rock. It blunts itself to no 
purpose, and often rebounding from the resisting me- 
dium, returns upon the aggressor himself and wounds 
him. He who offends thee does it with intent to 
grieve ; the result of his offence he designs to be thy 
distress of mind. If thou art not troubled by him he 
has lost his pains, and is himself thereby distressed. 
Thou art therefore not only thyself sheltered from 
harm, which might be in itself sufficient, but thou hast 
the further joy of seeing thine adversary prostrated in 
his attempt, and his vexation is thy revenge. Such 
is the virtue and the reward of Patience." t This 
singular passage fully supports Tertullian in his self- 
condemnation ; it shows that he was even more deeply 
penetrated, than he was himself aware, with a spirit 
opposed to Christian gentleness and patience. 

* " Qui non turbine glomeratur, non nubilo livet, sed est tenerse 
serenitatis, apertus et simplex." (" De Patientia," xv.) 

f " Tunc tu non modo illsesus abis, sed insuper adversarii tui et 
frustratione oblectatus et dolore defensus. Hsec est patientise, 
utilitas, et voluptas." (Ibid., viii.) 



39 6 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Any man knowing, as he did, what true repentance 
meant, and waging earnest and steady warfare with 
himself, could not but be conscious of a constant need 
for prayer. His treatise on Prayer, which, like that of 
several other Fathers, is a paraphrase of the Lord's 
Prayer, contains, beside valuable details as to the 
practices of the Church in the second century, some 
noble sayings and true cries of the soul after God. 
" How daring is it," he exclaims, " to pass one day 
without praying ! Prayer is the bulwark of faith ; it 
is our shield and our arrow to be used against our ever- 
watchful foe. Let us then never go forth unarmed ; 
let us, clothed in the armour of prayer, defend the 
standard of our Captain, and await in prayer the 
trump of the angel." * 

There are four other writings of Tertullian belonging 
to this period : his treatise on Prayer ; his two letters 
to his wife, already mentioned ; his treatise on Idolatry, 
characterised by the excessive severity which led him 
to condemn not only all contact with paganism, but 
also with society outside the Church ; and finally, 
his treatise on Baptism, in which we find a singular 
combination of spirituality and sacramental materi- 
alism ; for while he urges the postponement of the 
baptism of children, he holds that some magical virtue 
is present in the baptismal water. We need not be 
astonished at these paradoxes ; strong contradictions 
and abrupt antitheses form a part of the very nature 
of the man.t 



* " Ouam autem temerarium est diem sine oratione transigere." 
(" De Oratione," x.) 

» t " Oratio murus est fidei, arma et tela nostra. Sub armis 
orationis signum nostris imperatoris custodiamus, tubam angeli 
expectemus orantes." (Ibid., xxiv.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 397 

We approach now the decisive crisis in his life. It 
was but the culmination of moral influences, long at 
work — his excessive rigour, his pursuit of the ideal, 
his chimerical and ardent spirit, his keen consciousness 
of the imperfections of the Church. The Montanist 
sect could not fail to be attractive in its exalted piety 
to such a mind as Tertullian's. The stern severity of 
its discipline, the union of a realism coloured with the 
warmest hues of the oriental imagination, with an 
unbending spirit of independence, — these peculiar cha- 
racteristics of Montanism answered so exactly to the 
aspirations of Tertullian, that he inevitably became 
one of its apostles. Had Montanism not been already 
in existence, he would have been its founder. It is 
certain that a journey taken by him to Rome,»led him 
to make a decision, of the importance of which he 
could not be unaware, since it placed him beyond the 
limits of the Church, and launched him on a perilous 
sea of opposition. St. Jerome attributes his change of 
opinion to discussions in which he is supposed to have 
engaged with the clergy of the Church of Rome. He 
accuses Tertullian of yielding to a feeling of envy, 
while he nevertheless fully admits that he had received 
provocation from his opponents.* From these rather 
vague expressions, we conclude that the priest of the 
Church of Carthage entered into a controversy with 
the heads of the Church of Rome, and that the 
discussion was carried on on both sides with too much 
vehemence and passion. 

In order rightly to understand the subject-matter 

* " Hie cum usque ad mediam aetatem presbyter Ecclesiae per- 
mansisset invidia nostra et contumeliis, clericorum Romanae 
Ecclesiae ad Montani dogma delapsus." (Hieron., " De Viris 
IUustr.," liii.) 



39$ THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the dispute, we need only realise to ourselves the 
circumstances in which the Church of Rome was at 
this time placed. Now, the recent discovery of the 
" History of Heresies," ascribed to St. Hippolytus, and 
which belongs undoubtedly to this period, enables us 
to form a very exact idea of the situation of the 
Roman Church at the moment. This writing, — a 
remarkable one in many respects, — informs us that it 
was just at this period, under the pontificate of Zephy- 
rinus, that the party led by Callisthus, and seeking to 
assure the triumph of the hierarchy, entered into 
alliance with a little group of heretics lately arrived 
from the East, whom it treated with the utmost con- 
sideration, in order to ensure their support against the 
representatives of the ancient austere discipline of the 
Church. The reason of this coalition is easily to be 
understood. These heretics, among whom were Sabel- 
lius, Cleomenes, and Noetus, were agreed in denying 
the distinction of the Divine persons in the doctrine 
of the Trinity. They had found their most zealous 
opponents among the Montanists, who were strongly 
attached to Trinitarian views. On the other hand, 
the Montanists were, by their ascetic severity and 
their determined assertion of the universal priesthood 
— which went so far as to do away with a special 
priesthood altogether — the sworn foes of the hierar- 
chical faction. Thus the party of Callisthus and 
the party of the Oriental heretics, found themselves 
drawn and bound together by a common hatred of 
Montanism. 

Such were the conditions under which Tertullian 
arrived in Rome, and at once entered into a hot dis- 
cussion with the clergy of that important Church. 
What subject more likely to be the theme of such a 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 399 

discussion than the questions raised by the critical 
conjuncture which, on the authority of St. Hippolytus, 
we have just described ? This supposition is confirmed 
in the most positive manner by the testimony of 
Tertullian himself. In fact, he tells us that he went 
into Italy, fully prepared for the conflict, and well 
informed of the position of the various parties. A 
short time before starting on his journey, he had met 
in Carthage a heretic, named Praxeas, who had come 
from Rome. He professed the same views as Sabellius 
and Noetus, and had openly opposed Montanism ; he 
had even obtained from Bishop Victor, the successor 
of Zephyrinus, the condemnation of that sect, which 
had been at first treated with consideration.* Ter- 
tullian argued with him, discussed his opinions, refuted 
them, and led him to retract. It was soon after this 
triumph that he repaired to Rome,t already well dis- 
posed towards the Montanists, having learned, in his 
contest with Praxeas, to regard them as the champions 
of orthodoxy. At Rome he found in full activity all 
the errors with which he had successfully contended 
at Carthage ; indeed, here they were sustained by the 
patronage of some of the high dignitaries of the Church. 
He substantiates the report of a coalition entered into 
between the hierarchical and heretical parties, for the 
suppression of Montanist views. It was natural, there- 
fore, that he should regard the Montanists as the allies 
from whom he must seek support. His discussions 
with the Roman clergy intensified his feelings of irrita- 
tion, and he threw himself, with all the vehemence of 
his nature, into the party whose views of dogma and 

* " Episcopum Romanum coegit litteras pacis revocare." (" Adv. 
Prax.," i.) 

t Lenain de Tillemont places the journey of Tertullian under 
Zephyrinus. ( " Memoires," III. 237 J 



400 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Church government were most strongly opposed to the 
hated tendencies of the hierarchy, and which was 
already engaged in earnest conflict with a coalition 
which seemed to Tertullian odious and impious. He 
was first made a Montanist by his strong repugnance 
to those who repudiated Montanism. He was not a 
man to rest content, like Origen and St. Hippolytus, 
with a simple protest against them ; to his protest 
he added the emphasis of an open separation of him- 
self from the Church, and, with all his genius and 
all his eloquence, he passed over into the camp of 
schism.* 

Tertullian's change of opinion is not manifested in 
a very marked manner in his writings. He continues 
to occupy himself with the same questions, and treats 
them in the same style, and, save for a slight increase 
of exaggeration, and some rare allusions to the favourite 
ideas of Montanism, he exhibits, as a writer, the same 
excellencies and defects as before. He was, in truth, 
in spirit a Montanist, before he became one avowedly 
and formally. There was no sudden change in him, 
but only the development of a tendency previously 
existing. His sentiments remain the same : they are 
only raised, as it were, into a higher key; they break 
through all restraint, and reveal themselves in their 

* We hope that this explanation of Tertullian's sudden change 
will not strike the reader as forced. It is based upon a very simple 
process of deduction. It is certain that he was in Rome at the 
commencement of the third century, under Zephyrinus. It is 
equally certain that the heretical and anti-Montanist tendency of 
Praxeas. against which he so earnestly laboured, acquired for a time 
a great ascendency over the clergy of Rome, through the intrigues 
of Callisthus, and that this was just at the period of Tertullian's 
visit to that city. It seems to us very obvious to see in these 
circumstances the cause of the violent controversy between Ter- 
tullian and the clergy of Rome mentioned by St. Jerome, and of 
Tertullian's change of opinions, 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 4OI 

full force. Schismatic as he is, Tertullian still continues 
to combat heresy with even redoubled vehemence. 
His challenges to paganism are increasingly bold and 
menacing, and his austerity as a moralist reaches the 
point of hardness. 

In this second period of his career we have only one 
apologetic writing from his pen — the letter to the Pro- 
consul Scapula, which is assigned to the year 211. A 
haughty and defiant tone rings through these lofty 
pages, which conclude with a bold denunciation of the 
judgments of God against the persecutors. That which 
we most admire in the letter, is the explicit recogni- 
tion of the rights of conscience. This man, who can 
scarcely brook any discussion with a heretic, repudiates 
coercion in matters of religion with as much distinct- 
ness as we in our day, and with that eloquence which is 
his speciality. It is a singular blending of dogmatic 
intolerance with moral toleration, which can neverthe- 
less be explained by his hatred of everything resem- 
bling philosophic culture, and his confidence in the 
instincts of the human soul, however rude and ignorant. 
He does not desire liberty of thought, because that 
would involve the recognition of the claims of science, 
which he distrusts ; but he does desire liberty of con- 
science, because the instinct of the divine appears to 
him so much the more sure, the more it is left to work 
directly in the hearts of the people. This is the solu- 
tion of a contradiction which at first excites surprise. 

If Tertullian, as a Montanist, concerned himself 
comparatively little with pleading the cause of Chris- 
tianity before the bar of pagan society, he took peculiar 
pains to make broad and deep the gulf between that 
society and the Church. His treatise on the Crown of 
the Soldier supports his treatise on Idolatry, in abso- 



402 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

lutely interdicting military service for the Christian. 
In short, that which he desires is not only to separate 
himself from the world in all the usages of life, but to 
stir up the world's hatred, so as at length to fall under 
its blows. No rupture less than this can suffice him ;• 
and he preaches martyrdom as the highest realisation 
of the Christian's calling. Not satisfied with combat- 
ing, in his treatise against the Scorpion-Gnostics, the 
heretics who call in ' question the lawfulness of a 
martyr's death, and cover their cowardice with foolish 
sophisms, he denies the right of escaping from death, 
even when it can be done without compromise ; and he 
writes pages of burning indignation against those who 
flee in the time of persecution, failing to perceive that 
however subtle his interpretation, he is placing himself 
in direct contradiction with the precept and example of 
the Lord Jesus Christ. 

This same principle of extravagant austerity ani- 
mates all his moral treatises of this period. In his two 
books on the Adornment of Women, he rigidly con- 
demns all luxury, and exacts from Christian women the 
most severe simplicity. The opening page of this 
treatise is one of the most beautiful in his writings. 
He desires that the woman should be as a penitent and 
weeping Eve, wearing the veil of mourning, and putting 
far away from her all vain adornment.* " O woman ! " 
he adds, " it has been told thee that thou shouldst 
bear children in sorrow and anguish, and that thou 
shouldst be subject to thine husband. Dost thou not 
know that thou art ever the same Eve ? The sentence 
of God weighs ever on thy sex ; thou art then still 
under His chastening stroke. Thou didst give place to 
the devil among us ; thou didst break through the 

* " Evam lugentem etpcenitentem." (" De Cultu Feminarum," i.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 403 

barrier which guarded the forbidden tree ; thou wast 
the £rst to desert the divine law ; and because of the 
death thou hast deserved, the Son of God must needs 
die. And wouldst thou have other adornment than 
robes of skins ? Dost thou think that if, at the 
beginning of the world, the fleeces of Miletus had 
been already shorn, and vestments had been woven of 
the trees of India ; if Tyre had brought forth her 
purple, and Phrygia her broidered veils, and Babylon 
her tissues ; if the pearl had gleamed and the ruby 
glowed ; if avarice had delved into the earth for gold ; 
if the mirror had been even then permitted to tell its 
flattering falsehoods,— dost thou think that Eve, driven 
out of Paradise as one already dead,* would have de- 
sired such adornments ? All these ponderous treasures 
heaped on a woman already condemned and dead, are 
but funereal pomp."t 

The treatise on the Duty of Virgins to be Veiled, 
urges the same considerations in a more subtle form. 
The ascetic tendency becomes more and more marked ; 
it is especially manifest in Tertullian's two writings on 
Chastity and Monogamy. In the former, he degrades 
marriage almost to the level of adultery, and in the 
latter, faithful to the principles of Montanism, he 
absolutely prohibits second marriages. The treatise on 
Modesty gives, in a form of greatly augmented rigour, 
the same directions which he had laid down in his 
treatise on Penitence. According to this writing, no 
pardon or return is possible for those who, after baptism, 
have fallen into so grave a sin as adultery. This 
Tertullian regards as apostasy for self-gratification, a 

* "Jam mortua, opinor." ("De Cultu Feminarum/' 1.) 
t " Ideo omnia ista damnatas et mortuae mulieris impedimenta 
sunt, quasi ad pompam funeris constituta." (Ibid.) 



404 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

crime of far deeper dye than apostasy from fear of 
torture. "What!" he passionately exclaims, "will 
you re-admit denied rather than bleeding bodies ?* 
Which is the more deserving of pity in his penitence — 
the man whose flesh has been polluted, or he whose 
flesh has been torn by tortures ? The one denies Christ 
in spite of himself, the other yields to debauch of his 
own free will. Passion obeys nothing but its own 
seducing voice, and none can pretend they are under 
constraint when self-gratification is concerned. t On 
the contrary, what varieties of anguish and torture are 
brought to bear to compel apostasy before the tribunals ! 
Who has the more foully denied Christ — he who 
deserts Him in the hour of uttermost agony, or he who 
forsakes Him at the call of lust ? he who suffers bitterly 
in turning away from Him, or he who gives Him up in 
mere lightness?"! I n his treatise on Fasting, Ter- 
tullian defends the rigorous practices of Montanism, 
and maintains, in opposition to the Church of his time, 
the compulsory character of fasting under the new 
covenant — a fresh proof of the influence he still con- 
tinued to exert even as a heretic, for the Church 
ultimately came round to his view. We have yet to 
notice one singular writing of his — " De Pallio." He 
had been ridiculed for exchanging the toga for the 
pallium of the old Greek philosophers; he justifies 
himself by showing that the philosopher's mantle is 
the symbol of austerity. He who has the right to wear 
it may say to the brilliant but corrupt society by which 

* " Contaminata potius corpora revocabis, quam cruenta." 
(" De Pudicitia," xxii.) 

t "Nulla ad libidinem vis est, nisi ipsa, nescit quodlibet cogi." 
(Ibid.) 

X " Quis magis negavit, qui Christum vexatus an qui delectatus 
amisit." (Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 405 

he is surrounded: " I desire nothing of thee. I owe 
nothing either to the forum, or to the field of Mars, or 
to the senate ; I occupy no office ; I frequent no 
audience of praetors. ... I am no soldier, judge, or 
governor ; I have withdrawn from the people."* Such 
was, in truth, Christian life, according to Tertullian's 
conception of it; a life altogether separated from pagan 
society, which* it condemns by the mere strangeness 
and sadness of its aspect. That which made him take 
pleasure in the pallium was its singularity and -sombre 
colour : it was a silent censure on all the infamy 
and vice, which the rich Roman toga covered with 
its folds. 

Although he had adopted the garb of the Greek 
philosophers, he was not on that account any the more 
tolerant of their views. His polemics indicate, on the 
contrary, a growing violence and asperity with regard 
to them. He encountered among his adversaries a 
painter named Hermogenes, whom he ridiculed un- 
sparingly as an artist, before refuting him as a heretic. 
He made merciless use of his vein of satire at the 
expense of this unfortunate individual. Hermogenes 
believed in a material element, eternal, confused, 
chaotic, tumultuous. " In this element," says Ter- 
tullian, " he represented himself." To see how far 
passion could lead him, we have only to read the first 
chapter of his treatise against Marcion. He com- 
mences by painting in repulsive colours Pontus, the 
fatherland of the heretic, " a country inhabited by bold 
and bloody barbarians, where the sky is iron, the light 
always dim, the sky always cloudy, the wind always 
boisterous, winter eternal, the earth inert and cold, 

* " Non judico, non milito, non regno, secessi de populo." ("De 
Pallio," v.) 



406 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

bringing forth nothing but monsters."* " Of all these 
monsters, Marcion is the greatest. t The worst thing 
that can be said, even of this barbarous country, is that 
it should have produced such a man — a man more 
savage than the Scythian, more inhuman than the 
Massagete, fiercer than the whirlwind, more gloomy 
than the thunder-cloud, colder than winter, more rugged 
than Caucasus. This is the true Promefheus, belching 
forth blasphemy against Almighty God. He is more 
destructive than the beasts of those wild countries. 
What devouring creature of Pontus can be compared to 
him who preys upon our Gospels ?X Diogenes' dog 
sought for a man with a lantern in the full sunshine. 
Marcion, after extinguishing the torch of faith, lost 
the God whom he had found." We have vainly 
endeavoured to convey the vituperative force of this 
passage, which shows to what a height of hateful 
passion Tertullian allowed himself to be carried when 
speaking of his adversaries. That he should have done 
so, is the more surprising, because he had no need to 
avail himself of such methods to cover feebleness of 
argument ; on the contrary, his dialectic skill is great : 
he is fertile in resources, cutting, telling, ironical ; 
passing from subtle argumentation to exposition full of 
breadth and power, and rising often to the highest 
eloquence. He understood perfectly the art of giving 
point to an argument by a sudden and direct turn. 
Thus, after describing the paradoxical god of Marcion's 

* " Dies nunquam patens, unus aer, nebula, totus annus 
hybernum, omne quod flaveret aquilo est, omnia torpent, omnia 
rigent." (" Adv. Marc. ," i.) 

t " Nihil tarn barbarum ac triste apud Pontum quam quod ille 
Marcion." (Ibid.) 

t " Quis tarn comesor mus Ponticus, quam qui evangelia 
corrosit?" (Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 407 

doctrine, who, while he is holy, yet will not uphold by 
punishment the law of holiness, he exclaims : " Listen, 
Oye sinners, and you who, being not sinners as yet, may 
become so in the future : a more complaisant God has 
been discovered ; a God who is not to be offended or 
angered; who avenges not his law; who kindles no 
flames of Gehenna ; who suffers no gnashing of teeth 
in outer darkness — this is the good God of Marcion. 
He does indeed forbid evil, but only as a form."* 
Again, when seeking to establish the reality of the 
incarnation, and of the sufferings of the Redeemer, 
Tertullian shows, with an eloquence equal to his logic, 
that all Christianity totters to its fall if the humanity 
of Christ is a semblance. only. " Paul," he says, " was 
then mistaken when he declared that he would know 
nothing but Christ crucified ; he was wrong when 
speaking of His burial and His resurrection; our faith 
too is false, and all our hope in Christ an idle vision. t 
O miserable heretic, who dost, excuse the murderers 
of God ! Jesus Christ, in fact, suffered nothing from 
them, if He did not truly suffer. O thou who dost 
undermine the honour of the faith, in pity leave to the 
world its one hope ! Of him who shall be ashamed of 
me, saith the Master, will I be ashamed. I find no 
other ground for shame and contempt than the suffer- 
ings of Christ, and in not blushing for these I shall 
show a holy boldness, a blessed folly. The Son of God 
is born of a woman : I blush not for this ; there is no 
cause to blush. The Son of God died : this I believe, 
because it is foolishness to men. He was buried, and 

* "Audite, peccatores, deus melior inventus est." ("Adv. 
Marc," i. 27.) 

f " Phantasma est totum, quod speramus a Christo." ( " De 
Carne Christi," v.) 



403 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the third day He rose again : of this I am persuaded, 
because it is impossible.* . . . Why should the 
Christ have lived as man if there was nothing human 
in Him ? ... In such a case He must have been 
false before God ; He must have deceived all ages, all 
senses — those even of the men who came near to .Him 
and touched Him. We can then speak no more of 
Jesus Christ as having come down from heaven, but 
must regard Him as one of a company of strolling 
players; we may call Him no more the God-Man, but 
simply a new magician ; we see in Him not the priest 
of our salvation, but a mere theatrical performer."? 

This passage is in the best style of Tertullian, though 
not free from that tinge of irony and defiance which 
always characterises him. Many more examples of the 
same kind might be cited, too frequently interspersed 
with sophistical arguments or biting sarcasms, but also 
often reaching high poetical effect. 'What writer ever 
spoke with more sublimity of the sorrowful and tragic 
character of death ? In the treatise upon Souls we 
read thus : " We who know the origin of man, know 
with certainty that death proceeds not from nature, 
but from sin ; hence, though there are many forms of 
dying, there is not one which can be called gentle. 
The essential element of death, however easy the death 
may be, is always a sharp rupture. How can we call 
by any other name the severance between soul and 
body — those two substances bound together from the 

* " Natus est Dei Filius ; non pudet quia pudendum est, et 
mortuus est Dei Filius, prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est, et 
sepultus resurrexerit, certum est, quia impossible." ( " De Carne 
Christi," xv.) 

f " Ergo jam Christum non de ccelo deferre debueras, sed de 
aliquo circulatorio coetu, nee Deum praster hominem, sed magum 
hominem, nee salutis pontificem, sed spectaculi artificem." (Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 409 

birth like twin sisters ? Like a vessel which, having 
weathered all storms, is sailing under a cloudless sky 
over glassy waters, gliding along under the soft caresses 
of the summer breeze and amid the songs of the 
sailors, when suddenly it springs a leak, and goes down 
into the deep ; * so does life often make shipwreck 
in the midst of quiet and seeming security. Let the 
ship which has carried the soul in safety be sound or 
unsound, it matters not ; the moment comes when the 
voyage is brought to a sudden end."t 

Let us now pass in rapid review the polemical writ- 
ings of Tertullian during this period. In his treatise 
against Praxeas he maintained the divinity of Christ, 
while clearly subordinating the Son to the Father ; his 
writing against Hermogenes is designed to refute the 
idea of the eternity of matter. His argument with the 
Jews has come down to us only in an interpolated form. 
In his other treatises he aims mainly to confute the 
false idealism of the Gnostics. We shall mention first 
his great work against Marcion, a document of inesti- 
mable value for its comprehensiveness and richness, in 
which we shall find abundant information bearing on 
the history of heresies, and the progress of Christian 
ideas in the second century. The treatises on the Body 
of Christ, on the Resurrection of the Body, on the 
Soul, and lastly, that directed against the disciples of 
Valentinus, belong to the same category, and give 
evidence of the same bent of mind. 

It was this reaction against Gnosticism which gave to 
all his theology the strongly-marked realism by which 
it is distinguished. Gnosticism seeks to annihilate 

* " Nullis depugnata turbinibus, adulante flatu, intestino repente 
perculsu, cum tota securitate desidunt." ( " De Anima," lii.) 
t Ibid. 

27 



410 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

nature ; it sets a curse upon the material world as the 
creation of an evil deity. In opposition to this view, 
Tertullian magnifies the beauty and harmony of the 
visible universe. So long as his realism confines itself 
within these limits, it is true, and suggests to the hard 
and hot polemic, pictures full of freshness and grace. 
He writes to Marcion : "A little flower growing, not in 
the fair green meadows, but on a thorn-bush ; a little 
sea-shell, not that from which the purple dye is drawn ; 
the wing, I say, not of a proud peacock, but of the 
humblest of birds, — all these speak the praise of their 
Maker. It is enough for me to offer thee a rose, to put 
to silence thy words of scorn for the Creator-God."* 
He depicts in lofty poetry the resurrection of nature, 
prophetic of our own resurrection. " The day," he 
says, " dies in the night, and is buried in darkness. t 
The glory of the world is covered with a shroud ; all 
is turned to gloom. Sadness, silence, horror, reign over 
the universe. . . . Nature mourns in sable garments 
for the lost light. And yet the light revives in beauty, 
and the sun goes forth like a bridegroom in strength 
throughout the whole world, triumphing over the night 
of death ; raised from its sepulchre of darkness, re- 
joicing in its own goodly heritage, till once again it 
sinks in night. £ Then in the darkness shine forth the 
stars, which the day had veiled." 

Tertullian gives an equally happy description of the 
resurrection of the earth in spring, when the dismantled 
trees put on their robe of renewed foliage, and the 

* "Rosam tibi si obtulero, non fastidies creatorem." (" Adv. 
Marc," i. 13, 14.) 

f " Dies moritur in noctem et tenebris usquequaquam sepelitur. 
Funestatur mundi honor." (" De Resurrectione Carnis," xii.) 

X " Et tamen rursus cum suo cultu, cum dote, cum sole, eadem 
et integra et tota universo orbi reviviscit." (Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 4II 

flowers unfold their brightness. <e O admirable wisdom ! " 
he exclaims, " which preserves for us that of which it 
deprives us, which despoils only to enrich, and destroys 
only to increase ; thus we derive a sort of usurious 
interest from that which slips from us, and gain by that 
which we- lose.* I may say that restitution is the law 
of the universe ; all that which comes to an end com- 
mences anew, and it finishes only to recommence. 
Nothing dies but that it may live again, and the revolu- 
tions of the world are one overwhelming proof of the 
resurrection. t v God had inscribed this on His works 
before he wrote it in His book. He has placed thee in 
the school of nature, and has given Nature to be thy 
prophetess, that thou mightest the more readily believe 
in the sacred oracles, and that, as His disciple, thou 
mightest the more easily receive the revelation, from 
having witnessed its fulfilment, as it were, in all the 
world around thee. "J 

Unhappily Tertullian is not satisfied with admiring 
nature, and discerning in the material universe a 
radiation of the higher world of spirit. He makes 
the two completely one, and regards them as indis- 
solubly united. He even goes so far as to assert that 
both God and the soul have a corporeal being. || He 
thus becomes a very materialist, and such a creed 
chimes in only too well with the millennial visions of 
the Montanists. This gross realism seems at first 
incompatible with the extreme asceticism of Tertullian, 

* "Revera fcenore interitu et injuria usura, et lucro damno." 
(" De Resur. Carnis," xii.) 

f " Totus igitur hie ordo revolubilis rerum testatio est resur- 
rectionis mortuorum." (Ibid.) 

X " Prasmisit tibi naturam magistram, discipulus naturse, quo 
statim admittas cum audieris quod ubique jam videris." (Ibid.) 

|| " Contra Marc," i. 13 ; " De Anima," iv* 5. 



412 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

for if the corporeal element is divine, why macerate and 
destroy the body ? This anomaly is explained, if it 
is borne in mind that Gnosticism, under pretext of 
despising the body, had gone to the utmost lengths of 
license. Anti-Gnosticism makes its protest at once 
against false idealism, and against the moral laxity 
of its adversaries ; and encountering in them this 
flagrant contradiction, it opposes it with another 
paradox equally palpable. On the same principle we 
must account for Tertullian's mistrust of all speculation, 
which leads him into many a serious error, as if to 
show that an undue contempt for metaphysics is no 
less fraught with danger than the opposite extreme. 
Happily the same moral sentiment which pervaded the 
writings of all the Fathers of this period, is obvious 
in those of Tertullian. He believed with all his soul 
in freedom in God and man, and he thus defended 
the great doctrine of Christian spirituality against the 
crafty sophists, who sought to crush it under the 
weight of dualism. 

If we have gained any just impression of Tertullian 
in the various aspects of his character and genius, we 
shall subscribe to the judgment passed upon him by 
Vincent de Lerins. He says : " Who of all his race 
was ever more instructed and versed in things human 
and divine ? His genius was at once so powerful and 
so impetuous that he never devoted himself to the 
study of any doctrine, but he brought to bear on it all 
the weight of his reason, or pierced through all its 
intricacies with his penetrating glance.* Who can 
sufficiently extol his eloquence ? There is a sort of 

* " Ingenio vero nonne tarn gravi ac vehementi excelluit, ut nihil 
sibi pene ad expugnandum proposuit, quod non aut acumine irrup- 
erit, autpondere eliserit." (Vincent de Lerins, " Commonitor.," xxiv.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 413 

necessity in his logic which forces conviction on those 
whom it cannot persuade ; every word conveys a 
striking thought, and every thought is a triumph over 
his opponents.* This his adversaries know well, for 
he has come down like a thunderbolt, crushing the dead 
mass of their blasphemous writings. He is among the 
Latins what Origen is among the Greeks — the greatest 
of all."t 

Vincent de Lerins, in placing side by side the names 
of Origen and Tertullian, ventures on one of those 
bold antitheses in which the ardent African himself 
delighted. In. truth, these two men contrast with each 
other in every feature. On the one hand, we have a 
genius large and calm as a summer sea, serene in all 
its depth and breadth ; on the other, we have a torrent 
foaming and eddying between narrow banks. On the 
one hand, we have a noble and lofty toleration, a 
sympathetic nature, everywhere seeking and finding- 
allies for its cause, quick in discerning the points of 
contact between Christianity and all that had gone 
before it ; on the other, a haughty intolerance, every- 
where seeking and finding foes. The one interposes 
between hostile parties ; he fulfils the part of a firm 
and conciliatory mediator between ancient philosophy 
and the Gospel ; the other will hear of no such recon- 
ciliation ; to him the past is all accursed. The former 
takes pleasure in calm discussions, in conferences peace- 
fully conducted, and in which mutual respect is shown ; 
the latter will not suffer a heretic to speak, or if he 
deigns to argue with him, he opens the argument with 

* " Cujus quot pene verba, tot sententise sunt ; quot sensus tot 
victorise. ,J (Vincent de Lerins, " Common itor.," xxiv.) 

r " Nam sicut ille apud Grsecos, ita hie apud Latinos princeps." 
(Ibid.) 



4I4 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

outrage and invective. Origen and Tertullian both re- 
sisted the pretensions of the hierarchy, but the polemics 
of Tertullian were as full of vehemence and passion as 
those of the great Alexandrine of gentleness and for- 
bearance. Both fell into error on many points, but 
Origen erred on the side of too abstract speculation, 
Tertullian on the side of too absolute materialism. 
The eloquence of the one is broad and transparent — a 
noble, full, majestic river, like his genius ; the eloquence 
of the other is a turbid mountain torrent. Origen's 
words flash like lightning ; Tertullian's roll like thunder. 
Origen appeals primarily to the powers of intelligent 
thought, he speaks as a Christian philosopher to 
philosophers ; Tertullian as a tribune passionately haran- 
guing the throng on the highway ; he is the ancient 
orator, using vehement gestures, vivid images, pathetic 
appeals. In both, however, we find perfect sincerity, 
and an equal love to Christ and to truth. Hence their 
great influence in the Church. Thus, then, two heretics 
are recognised even by the stern guardian of tradition 
which proscribed them, as the two grandest represen- 
tatives of the Church of the third century ; and the 
judgment of Vincent de Lerins has been confirmed by 
posterity. 

§ III. Cyprian and Amobhis. 

It is a striking proof of the influence exercised, in 
spite of his Montanist views, by Tertullian after his 
death, that the chief of the hierarchical party in 
Carthage in the third century openly declared himself 
his disciple. Cyprian, who had been his most deter- 
mined opponent on ecclesiastical questions, used to 
call for his writings every day, saying, " Give me the 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 415 

master." In the apologist and theologian he forgot the 
schismatic, and admiration made him just.* Through 
his medium, many of Tertullian's ideas were to become 
current in the Church ; they were transmitted through 
his writings in a softened and moderated form, and, by 
a singular diversion from their original intention, were 
made to contribute, as they flowed through a new 
channel, to the strength of the hierarchy. 

Thascius Ccecilius Cyprian was born at Carthage, in 
high station, and in the midst of paganism. t His 
father was a man of wealth and influence, holding- 
important offices. He was a senator in the capital of 
proconsular Africa. The young patrician saw a fine 
career open before him, and his brilliant talents well 
fitted him to adorn it. He possessed keen literary 
tastes, and while studying jurisprudence with a view 
to filling subsequently some office in the State, he 
devoted himself assiduously at the same time to the 
cultivation of letters, and, while still very young, 
became a professor of rhetoric. J In an age when all 
free expression of opinion was silenced, literary in- 
struction acquired an especial importance in cities like 
Carthage, which were the nurseries of civilisation and 
centres of government. Cyprian was surrounded with 
too many temptations in his high position, and was 
too feeble in moral principle, not to fall into the vices 

** "Nunquam Cyprianum absque Tertulliani lectione unum diem 
praeteriisse, ac sibi crebro dicere : Da Magistrum." (St. Jerome, 
"De Viris Illustr.," liii.) 

f See. for the life of Cyprian, his works, and his biography, by 
the Deacon Pontius ; St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.." lxvii. ; 
Lenain de Tillemont, " Memoires," IV. 45 ; " Vie de St. Cyprian," 
Paris, 1747 (an excellent anonymous monograph) ; Bcehringer, 
I. 375 ; Gregory Nazianzen, " Oratio," xviii. 

I " Primum gloriose rhetoricam docuit." (St. Jerome, " De Viris 
Illustr.," lxvii.) 



416 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

common to the young pagans of his day. He has 
himself recorded his youthful excesses with unsparing 
frankness. As a Christ : an, he passes judgment on his 
life as a pagan, in the light of a renewed conscience, 
and does not seek by any excuse or palliative to cover 
the past. " When I still lay," he says, " in darkness 
and deep night, tossed about on the stormy billows of 
the age, drifting uncertainly hither and thither, un- 
knowing what to do with my life, a stranger to truth 
and light,* I regarded as incredible and impossible that 
which Divine mercy proffers for my salvation, I mean 
that regeneration, that washing with pure water, that 
putting off of the old nature, that change of soul and 
spirit promised, while the same body is still retained. 
How shall a man be taught sobriety who has 
accustomed himself to sumptuous living every day ? 
How shall one who has been wont to walk proudly in 
garments of purple and gold, content himself with a 
simple, plebeian garb ? Can one who has aspired to 
the fasces, be made willing to renounce honours and 
retire into obscurity ? The passions weave invincible 
spells, to which those who have once known them must 
always yield. Strong drink will stimulate their desire 
after it, pride will inflate and anger inflame them; cove- 
tousness will make them greedy, cruelty will urge them 
on to crime, and they will pass from the intoxication 
of ambition to that of sensuality. So I said to myself: 
for being myself a slave to these sinful desires, and 
never dreaming to be freed from them, I voluntarily 
accepted their yoke, and, despairing of a better life, I 

* " Ego cum in tenebris atque in nocte caeca jacerem, cumque 
in salo jactantis saeculi nutabundus ac dubius vestigiis oberrantibus 
fluctuarem vitas meae nescius, veritatis ac lucis alienus." (Cyprian, 
" De Gratia Dei," 4.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 417 

clung to my perversity as if it were a part of my very 
self."* 

It is clear from this passage, that even during his 
life of sin, Cyprian was not utterly insensible to the 
appeals of the Gospel ; an arrow had fixed in his heart, 
and he tried in vain to draw it out. Opportunities of 
entering into relations with Christians had not been 
wanting to him in his native city. If we may believe 
St. Jerome, his first serious impression was received 
from reading the prophet Jonah. Living himself in 
another Nineveh, no less corrupt than the Assyrian 
city, the same call to repentance seems to have reached 
his heart, which so many ages before had bowed in 
humiliation an entire idolatrous people. t But the 
decisive call reached him through a priest named 
Cascilius, one born, like himself, a pagan. This man, 
who was probably attached to Cyprian by bonds of 
friendship and kindred, was bent with his whole soul 
on the conversion of his friend; this he made his 
constant concern, his great work, deeming that a whole 
lifetime of prayer and pious labour was richly repaid 
by the gain of a single soul to Jesus Christ. Christian 
proselytism still retained its vitality ; it was as earnest 
as it was extensive in its operations, and while it did 
not neglect to cast its wide net over entire peoples, 
it could also, where occasion served, concentrate its 
efforts with admirable perseverance and energy upon 

* " Ut ipse quam plurimis vitas prioris erroribus implicitus 
tenebar, quibus exui me posse non crederem, sic vitiis adhae- 
rentibus obsecundans eram et desperatione meliorum malis 
meis veluti jam propriis ac vernaculis offavebam." (Cyprian, " De 
Gratia Dei/' 4.) 

t " Proponamus nobis beatum Cyprianum qui, cum prius idolatries 
assertor fuisset in tantam gloriam venit eloquentiae, ut oratoriam 
doceret Carthagine, audisse sermonem Jonas et ad pcenitentiam 
conversum." (St. Jerome, " In Jon.," iii.) 



418 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

a single soul. In order to remove his friend from 
every adverse influence, and to watch over him with 
the more unremitting and jealous care, Csecilius took 
him into his own home. He was a married man and 
the father of several children, and he thought, with 
reason, that the pure atmosphere of a Christian family 
would act favourably upon the heart of Cyprian, and 
would be more effectual than many words in giving 
him a disgust to the licence of pagan manners.* His 
expectations proved correct. The accomplished and 
profligate young rhetorician soon learned, under the 
influence of one whom he loved as a father, that 
the natural heart can be entirely changed, and he 
acknowledged, in his own experience, that that which 
is impossible with men is possible with God. A bond 
of tender and holy affection was thus formed for ever 
between Cyprian and Caecilius ; the former joined the 
name of his father in the faith to his own, and the 
latter, when dying, committed his family to his faithful 
disciple. After being proved as a catechumen, Cyprian 
witnessed at length the dawn of the solemn day on which 
he was to be admitted into the Church. He was filled 
with so great a joy that he lost all measure in its 
expression, and in his enthusiasm he ascribed to the 
waters of baptism a transformation, of which the 
sacrament was in truth but the sign and seal. It is 
impossible to read without emotion his description 
of the great change in his inner life. " When my 
stains," he says, " had been washed away in the 
life-giving water, a pure and heavenly light was 
diffused through my quieted heart. So soon as by 
the breath of the Spirit I was born again, all my 
doubts were suddenly removed, the gates of truth 
* Pontius, " Vita Cypr." 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 419 

were opened to me, my night was turned to day."* 
Thus set, as he himself says, upon a mountain-top, 
he saw everything in its real position, and in its 
true light, + and despised all that before had beguiled 
and led him astray. Pagan society, looked at 
from this luminous height,* appeared utterly loath- 
some, and he turned away from it for ever. Thus, 
to use the expression of St. Augustine, a new Cyprian 
took the place of the old. J He was not a man to do 
anything by halves. Like Tertullian, he had hot 
African blood in his veins, though he was capable of 
more self-restraint than that great master. He burst 
with one effort all the chains of his old life, and 
renounced at once all the advantages it offered. He 
sold his possessions, § and became a vigorous ascetic ; 
he wished to eschew even-thing that might remind him 
of the hated past. " Henceforth," says St. Gregory 
Nazianzen, " he had nothing but contempt for the 
world ; he forsook all the pomps and vanities of the 
age, and subjected his body to the most severe 
mortifications." , He observed, however, reasonable 
moderation in his self-inflicted penances. He did not 
go from one extreme to another, and while renouncing 
the vanities of the world, he did not seek by ostentatious 
austerities, glory 01 another kind, but no less flattering 
to the proud heart of man. His dress was simple, but 
vanity did not, as in the case of Diogenes, peer forth 
through rents in his mantle. His appearance was 

* " Patere clausa, lucere tenebrosa." \" De Gratia Dei." 4.) 

f " Paulisper te crede subduci in montis ardui verticem celsiorem." 
(Ibid.. 6.) 

I " Evertit veterem Cyprianum et novum Cyprianum aedificavit 
in se.' ; (St. Augustine, " Sermon. " CXIX. iii.) 

§ " Christianus iactus, omnem substantiam suam pauperibus 
erogavit." (St. Jerome, " De Yiris Illustr.," lxvii.) 

|| Gregory Nazianzen, " Orat.," xv. 



420 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

full of grave dignity; it at once inspired confidence and 
respect ;* and though he lived in seclusion, his high 
social position, the lustre of which followed him even 
into his retirement, his great talents, his fervent piety, 
and his large almsgivings, speedily won for him much 
esteem and affection in the Church of Carthage. The 
more he crept into the shade, the more were all eyes 
fixed upon him. Immediately upon his conversion, 
he mounted the breach to defend his new convictions ; 
to this work he devoted his extensive learning, his 
noble faculties, and a talent of language which bor- 
rowed greatness from the noble cause in which he used 
it, and to which his glowing faith communicated the 
spark of inspiration. " Of what avail to him had been 
his eloquence," says Augustine, " while he was still 
a pagan?" It was in his hand a precious cup from 
which he drank and from which he poured forth poison. t 
When by the goodness of God he had been enlightened, 
he became a vessel unto honour in the hand of God. 
Glory and praise to Him, who in justifying by faith 
the soul of His servant, snatched him from the service 
of impiety, and made his word a sharp two-edged sv/ord. 
The noble instrument of his eloquence, which had before- 
time served to adorn the deadly doctrine of devils, was 
henceforward used for the edification of the Church. 
That voice, which had been the martial trumpet 
animating the soldiers of the father of lies, now sent 
forth its sound only to sustain the courage of the 
martyr-saints, who, under their captain, Christ, over- 
throw the wicked one, while they lay down their lives 
for their Master. The pious and holy words of Cyprian, 

* Pontius, " Vita Cypr.," iv. 

+ " Tanquam poculo pretioso et bibebat mortiferos et proponebat 
errores." (St. Augustine, "Sermon.," CXII.ii.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 42I 

freed from the obscuring vapours of pagan superstition, 
gave forth a pure and heavenly brightness.* Before 
undertaking the defence of Christian truth, Cyprian 
diligently studied it himself, first in the sacred Scrip- 
tures, then in the writings of his forerunners in the 
faith, especially those of Tertullian. 

We have four treatises written by him before his 
elevation to the episcopate. His letter to Donatus 
magnifies the greatness of the Divine grace which had 
raised him from so low a deep. In these- pages we 
discern the former professor of rhetoric, who does not 
practise in his language the same ascetic principles 
by which he governs his life ; his discourse trains after 
it, like a toga, the long folds of its redundant periods. 
But the thoughts expressed are so truly Christian, the 
sentiments bear the impress of such deep sincerity, 
that their oratorical treatment cannot nullify their 
force. His treatise against the Vanity of Idols, is 
borrowed in great part from the " Octavius " of Minutius 
Felix. His tract on Testimony is a simple repertory 
of Scripture quotations divided into three books : the 
first treats of the relations of Judaism and Christianity, 
the second of the Incarnation, and the third of the 
morality of the Gospels. This work was designed 
to establish the faith of a young Christian named 
Quirinus. Possibly we must assign to this period his 
treatise addressed to virgins, which breathes the severe 
asceticism of Tertullian. In his early works, Cyprian 
displays little originality; he does not feel the need of 
giving fresh life to his subject by individual reflection; 
he willingly accepts already existing formulas of thought. 

* " Cuius pio et sancto, non jam fabulosos fumos emovente 
sed dominica luce radiante eloquio." iSt. Augustine, " Sermon.," 
CXII.iv.) 



422 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

These he expresses with clearness and eloquence, but 
does not connect them by a chain of arguments. It 
is at once evident that he will not rise to eminence 
as a theologian. His great abilities will find their 
scope in another sphere. 

He was soon raised to the bishopric by one of those 
imperative elections, in which men loved to recognise 
the Divine will. He had only been newly consecrated 
to the priestly office, when he was constrained by 
acclamation to accept the highest function, in the 
Church. The Christians were the more enthusiastic in 
their attachment to him, the more he was hated and 
ridiculed by the pagans. The latter, enraged at his 
conversion, and irritated by his powerful writings, 
heaped insults upon him.* In vain did he seek to 
escape from the urgent solicitations of the Christians 
of Carthage, dreading the result ; they followed him 
even into his dwelling, and unless he fled like a male- 
factor, he could do no other than yield to their strong 
desire. They were thus eager to place him at their 
head, because they felt that in him they would find the 
firm and wise pilot so much needed by the Church in 
the perilous days at hand. His election was opposed 
by some old members of the clergy of. this great 
Church, who were annoyed by so marked a preference 
of a younger man, and one whom they looked upon 
as inexperienced. They forgot that that which has 
been well called the Divine art of governing, is a gift 
and an instinct rather than an acquired science. From 
this party the new bishop was to meet with serious 
obstacles. But if he was young in the faith, he had 
already the maturity of years, and that richer maturity of 

* The pagans called him Coprian (from Koirpoq, dunghill), instead 
of Cyprian. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 423 

moral character, which in some favoured individuals 
is reached even in early life. " Where is the man," 
we read in his biography by the Deacon Pontius, "who 
having grown old in the faith, and having listened for 
long years to the sound of the Divine word, has done 
such great things as this neophyte, but just initiated 
into our mysteries, and already leaving far behind him 
his elders in age and in the faith ? It is not usual to 
reap as soon as one has sown ; no man gathers grapes 
from a vine just planted; none seeks fruit on a young 
sapling. But in Cyprian everything has advanced to a 
rapid maturity."* 

Once elevated to this high rank, he gave full proof 
of his fitness for it. He had not aspired to it, but 
he would not under any pretext derogate from the 
dignity of the office by concessions which, in lowering 
his own authority, would have done injustice, as he 
thought, to the sacred trust he held. We shall not 
enter now into the detail of his conflicts with the 
numerous adversaries he encountered, for this would 
be to anticipate the history of the internal crises of the 
Church. We shall simply trace the outline of Cyprian's 
career, as a bishop and a Christian. The numerous 
letters which he wrote under various circumstances, 
and particularly in the retirement from which, for 
a long time, he issued directions to his flock, furnish 
us with the most valuable documentary information, 
first • about himself, and then about the numberless 
difficulties- in the midst of which he had to hold 
the helm. 

Cyprian was essentially an advocate for governmental 
authority, though without any vulgar ambition for 
himself. He was the best and noblest representative 
* Pontius, " Vita Cypr.," ii. 



424 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the hierarchical party, and thus repaired the injury- 
done to that party by such men as Zephyrinus and 
Callisthus. To him was due the ultimate triumph of 
the hierarchy, although he withstood it when it sought 
to effect its crowning usurpation at Rome. Allowing 
for the difference of the times, of modes of civilisation 
and of thought, Cyprian reminds us in more than one 
respect of Ignatius, the great bishop of the second 
century. More prudent, more patient in awaiting the 
crown of martyrdom, he resembles Ignatius, especially 
in the high estimation in which he held the office of 
bishop, because of the elevated ideal he cherished 
of that office. The function of a bishop is a great and 
glorious one in his eyes, because he sees in it such 
great duties to be performed. He is guided by the 
highest motives, and thinks only of the good of the 
Church, which he unhappily identifies with a purely 
external unity. 

As soon as he entered upon his office, it became 
evident that he possessed the gift of governing souls. 
The Deacon Pontius writes : " Such grace and holiness 
beamed from his face, that he inspired with respect 
all who beheld him. His countenance was at once 
frank and thoughtful : he was grave without dulness, 
gentle without weakness, and combined al^ these various 
qualities in such a manner, that it was difficult to say 
whether he was the more to be loved or revered; indeed 
none could doubt that he was worthy of both love and 
reverence."* 

It would have been impossible to withhold affec-. 

tionate respect from so disinterested and generous a 

bishop as Cyprian. He showed unwearying devoted- 

ness to all the sufferers of his flock ; he hesitated at no 

* Pontius, " Vita Cypr./' vi. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 425 

sacrifice which could bring solace to the poor or to the 
prisoners. He had sold all his possessions soon after 
his conversion, that he might distribute to such as had 
need. A country house with which he had parted came 
back into his possession by some circumstance with 
which we are not acquainted ; he would have sold it 
again, but that he feared to attract the attention of the 
persecutors ; it was soon known, however, what became 
of the income he derived from it. Almost the whole 
sum was divided amongst indigent members of the 
Church. " I implore you," he wrote to his clergy, 
"take peculiar care of the widows, the sick, and the 
poor. If you find some in needy circumstances among 
the strangers, take all the sums necessary from the 
money which I left with Rogatian, our fellow-labourer 
in the priesthood.* Lest that fund should be ex- 
hausted, I have sent you a fresh supply by the acolyte 
Naricus, that you may be able promptly and generously 
to succour our brethren in distress." t Such messages 
as these occur again and again in his letters. With 
reference to the Christians in prison, he writes : " Let 
nothing be wanting .to those to whom no honour is 
wanting." J He set on foot liberal collections for those 
who were sentenced to work in the mines, and the 
primacy he is always most eager to assert for himself 
is that of giving. He is jealous that not the faintest 
suspicion of interested motive should rest upon any 
minister of the Church, and he severely blames one 
priest, who allowed himself to be named in a will as 

* " Sumptus suggeratis de quantitate mea propria." (" Epist," vii.) 
f " Quae quantitas ne forte jam universa erogata sit, misi aliam 

portionem, ut largius et promptius circa laborantes fiat operatio." 

(Ibid.) 

I " Ne quid ad curam desit iis quibus ad gloriam nihil deest." 

(Ibid.,i.) 

28 



426 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

trustee of the property of one Christian. " Those/' 
he says, "who are honoured to be in the priesthood, 
ought to attend only to the things of the altar, to 
sacrifice and prayer.* It is written that he who 
fights for God must not entangle himself with the 
affairs of this life. If these words are addressed 
to all Christians, with how much greater emphasis 
do they apply to those who are entirely devoted 
to Divine things! " In the fear lest any low or inte- 
rested motive should be supposed to bias the prayers 
of the clergy, he forbade prayer to be publicly offered 
for those who had made any legacy to a priest or 
deacon. 

Cyprian's charity never degenerates into weakness. 
He possessed that faculty of organisation which is an 
essential element of the genius of governing. Every 
thing in his Church was done in due order; and alms, 
so far from being given at hazard, were distributed 
with great prudence. A wise regulation made by the 
bishop, appointed frequent visitations of the poor, so 
that the help given might be proportioned to their 
necessities, and not continued longer than was re- 
quired. t We shall see that this regulation raised 
serious difficulties in his way, but we nevertheless 
regard it as a proof of his special fitness for the govern- 
ment of a great Church. While Cyprian thus aims 
at a steady maintenance of the hierarchy, he yet does 
not desire an unlimited extension of its authority. He 
tries to act in harmony with his clergy, and to have 
his measures sustained by the assent of the Christian 
community. " I have come to the resolution," he writes 
to his priests, " to do nothing of myself, without your 

* " Non nisi altari et sacrificiis deservire." (" Epist. ," i. I.) 
f "Epist./'xli. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 427 

opinion and the consent of the people."* Nevertheless, 
he governs his Church with a firm hand. He feels 
that the mainspring of the whole must be touched by 
him ; he has an eye for everything — nothing escapes 
him, from the smallest matter of detail to the most 
open irregularity or menacing division. His authority 
is all the more firmly established because it is exercised 
in so much love. Cyprian is not so much a bishop 
keeping jealous watch over his own rights, as he is a 
shepherd bearing the sacred burden of souls. He 
is not willing that one of his flock should wander or be 
lost. He would like to be present in every dwelling, 
and to rule his great family as a good father rules 
his house. Especially did he long to lighten with his 
presence the dark abodes where the confessors lay 
in chains, and to carry comfort, encouragement, and 
strength to his brethren in poverty or sickness. "Would 
God," he writes from the retreat towvhich he had fled 
that he might escape certain death, and thus be enabled 
a little longer to keep watch over the flock — "would 
God I were not hindered by distance and by duty from 
being present in your midst It With what readiness 
and joy would I fulfil my sacred ministry among you, 
my heroic brethren, and show to you the depth of my 
tender affection ! " He commends the sick, with pecu- 
liar earnestness, to the care of the clergy, regarding 
them also as God's confessors. " He who has accepted 
suffering and death, as under the eye of God, has 
endured all that it was God's will he should endure. 

* " Quando a primordio episcopatus mei statuerim nihil sine 
consilio vestro et sine consensu plebis mea privatim sententia 
gerere." ("Epist.," xiv. 4.) 

f " Utinam loci et gradus mei conditio permitteret, lit ipse nunc 
prassens esse possem !" (Ibid., xii. 1.) 



428 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

He has not been wanting in the spirit of martyrdom, 
but martyrdom has not come to him." * . . . Again 
he says, on the outbreak of a schism : " What a grief 
is it to me to be far from you, and only able to exhort 
you to act according to the Gospel of Christ. It was 
not, then, sorrow enough for me to be exiled for two 
years, not to be able, alas ! any more to see your faces, 
to look into your eyes, to weep day and night over this 
separation, because, though raised to the high rank of 
a bishop, I could neither see you nor receive your 
embraces ; to this desolation of soul is added the grief 
of being unable, in such a time of anxiety, to hasten 
to you." t Cyprian could say with St. Paul, "Who 
is offended, and I burn not ? " We have already 
quoted the touching words in which he expresses 
his deep grief at the numerous apostasies which dis- 
honoured the Church of Carthage. His heart bleeds 
with these wounds, and by the agonised tone of his 
lamentation we can measure the intensity of his love 
for souls. 

Cyprian combines with this devoted affection a prac- 
tical sagacity, which always leads him to perceive at 
once the right course to take. He gave the most 
striking and decisive proof of this when he had the 
courage to leave Carthage, just as the persecution under 
Decius broke out. To do so cost him a most painful 
sacrifice. He had read with admiration the burning 
pages, in which he whom he called his master had 
condemned flight in the presence of danger. He knew 
that a large party in his own Church shared this strong 
opinion, which had on its side all the prestige of 

* "Non enim ipse tormentis, sed tormenta ipsi defuerunt." 
("Epist.," xii. i.) 

f " Ipse singulos aggredi." (Ibid., xliii. 4.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 429 

heroism. Cyprian had enemies eager to cast a reproach 
upon him. Obviously the most easy and the most 
glorious course for him to pursue, would have been to 
remain at Carthage. Already the populace had more 
than once raised the cry, " Cyprian to the lions ! " 
The crown of martyrdom, rest from his labours, glory 
in heaven and fame upon earth, would all have been 
achieved at once by the bishop, if he had simply 
prolonged his stay in his native town. But he was 
guided by higher considerations ; he knew that duty 
comes before glory, and that the matter of supreme 
importance is to keep the charge committed to us, 
without impatiently seeking to exchange it for one more 
full of glory and of peril. Cyprian remembered the 
commandment of the Lord, who had enjoined flight 
in time of persecution, whenever it could be- accom- 
plished without cowardly denial of the faith. He knew 
how greatly the Church of Carthage stood in need of 
his direction ; the path of duty seemed to him plain. 
To remain in a city where he was at once so well 
known and so deeply hated was to court certain death. 
He therefore took the c6urse least easy to himself. 
"We are bound," he said, "to consider the general 
good, and, whatever pain it may cost us, to leave the 
city, that our presence may not exasperate the hatred 
and rage of the pagans." * From the retired place 
where he remained in concealment, he continued to 
direct his Church by frequent letters, thus carrying 
on in a manner the pastoral supervision of his flock.t 
It is in this correspondence that he displays especially 
his skill in the delicate art of controlling and directing 

* " Oportet nos tamen paci communi consulere, et interdum, 
quamvis cum tasdio animi nostri, deesse vobis." (" Epist.," vii.) 
f " Quomodo possum visito vos litteris meis." (Ibid., xliii. 1.) 



430 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

other minds. He maintains his authority over men with a 
gentle firmness, which is all the more irresistible because 
it never puts any on the defensive by arrogance of tone. 
His language adapts itself with admirable ease to the 
temperament and condition of those whom he addresses. 
In giving directions to his clergy, his style is clear, 
exact, and concise as a command ; but it is a command 
given without harshness and without pride. Cyprian 
is full of love, of enthusiasm, even of respect, when he 
endeavours to animate the courage of the confessors; 
he never forgets to treat them with all gentle consider- 
ation, even when he feels bound to oppose them, and 
his severity is tempered by the remembrance of their 
sufferings. In his correspondence with the heads of 
other Churches, he expresses himself with clearness 
and with judicial authority on the most critical ques- 
tions raised by the ecclesiastical controversies. He 
dispels all misunderstandings, and wins over those 
most prejudiced against him. He is quite prepared 
also, if necessary, to act with vigour and decision, and 
he is as bold in his opposition to the Bishop of Rome 
as to the martyrs, when the authority and independence 
of the episcopal office are called in question. 

He is never more eloquent, however, than when 
addressing Christians under circumstances of peril. 
He is like one of those great generals who are inspired 
by the presence of danger ; he speaks such words as 
kindle thousands of souls by the single spark flashed 
from a heroic spirit, words which bow trembling 
multitudes beneath their mighty sway, as the strong 
wind bows the fields of corn. Writing to the Christians 
of the little town of Thibaris, whom he was prevented 
from visiting according to promise, by the fresh outbreak 
of persecution, he says: " You must know that the day 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 43I 

of desolation has dawned upon us, and that the close 
of the present age and the coming of Antichrist are at 
hand. Let us be ready for the combat ; let us set our 
minds now on nothing but the glory of life eternal and 
the crown of the confessors. We are on the eve of a 
conflict sharp and terrible. The soldiers of Christ must 
arm themselves for it by an incorruptible faith and an 
indomitable courage, so that they may drink every day 
of the cup of the blood of Christ, and be ready to shed 
their blood for Him.* Let no one, then, desire or 
expect anything from this dying age ;t let each one of 

us follow the Christ eternal It ill becomes 

a soldier to speak only of peace, and to shrink at the 
sound of war. Does not the Lord go before us in this 
holy warfare, as the pattern of lowliness and meekness, 
of long-suffering and patience ? He was the first 
to do that which He desires us to do, and He has 
suffered for us all that He exhorts us to suffer. Be not 
terrified at the thought of the dangers of flight. Let 
not the solitude of the deserts into which you must 
steal, fill you with horror or alarm. He is not alone 
who has Christ with him in his flight. If some fugitive 
Christian has been killed by a brigand in a lonely 
spot, if he has fallen a prey to wild beasts, to hunger, 
or thirst, or cold, or tempest, Jesus Christ has been 
the witness of His faithful soldier fighting unto death. 
His martyrdom is well attested, and will be surely re- 
corded by Him, who knows and who crowns His true 
confessors. "J On another occasion, Cyprian addressed 

* "Idcirco se quotidie calicem sanguinis Christi bibere." 
(" Epist./' lviii. 1.) 

t " Ut nemo quidquam de saeculo jam moriente desideret." 
(Ibid., lviii. 2.) 

I " Sufficit ad testimonium martyrii sui testis ille, qui probat 
martyres et coronat." (Ibid., lviii. 4.) 



432 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

these pathetic words to his own Church, warning it 
against schism : " My beloved brethren, I beseech you 
not to lend a daring ear to pernicious words and 
deceitful speeches; take not darkness for light, night 
for day, hunger for the bread that nourishes, thirst 
for the water that quenches thirst, poison for medicine, 
death for life."* 

We shall for the present confine our attention to the 
conflicts in which Cyprian was engaged within his own 
Church. We have seen that from the time he entered 
upon his office, a hostile faction was formed against 
him among the members of the Church at Carthage. 
We shall have to inquire presently whether this party 
was actuated merely by motives of personal ambition, 
or whether it did not represent, in the capital of procon- 
sular Africa, that party of resistance which everywhere 
opposed the encroachments of the hierarchy, and which 
we have observed in all the great ecclesiastical centres 
of the day. Unhappily, the case was not parallel 
between Carthage and Rome. At Carthage, the hier- 
archy was much better represented than was the cause 
of liberty, and Cyprian stood on a far higher platform 
both of piety and disinterestedness than his adversaries. 
The most serious difficulties arose in the Church during 
the absence of the bishop. The confessors who had 
heroically endured a painful captivity for the name 
of Christ, taking advantage of the enthusiastic affec- 
tion of which they were the objects, held themselves 
to be superior to the disciplinary laws of the Church, 
and granted to Christians who had fallen, not merely 
an urgent recommendation to the Church, but even 

* " Ne pro luce tenebras, pro die noctem, pro cibo iamem, pro 
potu sitim, venerium pro remedio, mortem pro salute sumatis." 
^''Epist./' xviii. 4.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 433 

complete and immediate restoration to its fellowship. 
They thus raised a serious question of discipline, and 
provoked a sharp conflict of power at Carthage. Cyprian 
felt it incumbent on him to defend at once the episcopal 
authority and the disciplinary la.ws of the Church. He 
obtained the concurrence of the leading Churches of the 
West, his adversaries submitted one after another, and 
everything seemed to promise a peaceful termination 
to the contest, when the regulation referring to the 
distribution of alms, already mentioned, revived all the 
bitterness of party feeling. It was instigated by the 
Deacon Felicissimus, who was soon after irregularly 
raised to the priesthood by Novatus, one of the priests 
in opposition. The adversaries of Cyprian brought 
vehement recriminations against him for the broader 
views he had adopted in matters of discipline — views 
which kept the happy medium between laxity and 
extreme severity ; they accused him of favouring a loose 
morality, and constituted themselves the champions 
of a life of ascetic rigour. On his return to Carthage 
he wrote in opposition to them his treatise on fallen 
Christians, and called a synod of the bishops of the 
province (a.d. 251). His opponents split into two 
parties, each naming a bishop of its own. Fortunatus 
was chosen by the less intolerant section, and Maximus 
by the more rigid schismatics. Both were condemned 
by the first synod of Carthage, as the result of which, 
Novatus proceeded to Rome to seek a larger sphere 
of influence, and associating himself with Novatian, 
succeeded temporarily in dividing the whole Church. 
This entire controversy was summed up by Cyprian in 
his treatise against the Novatians, and the conclusions 
which he drew from it in favour of the hierarchy were 
presented by him with equal clearness and vigour in 



434 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

his celebrated treatise on the Unity of the Church. It 
was also at this time he wrote his apologetic treatise 
addressed to Demetrianus, in which he vindicated the 
new religion from the reproach of having brought down 
upon the world the scourges with which it was desolated. 
His treatise on Mortality, which is an epitome of the 
discourse delivered by him to his Church in the midst 
of the frightful epidemic which laid waste the city, 
is of the same date, as are also his writings on Alms- 
giving and on the Lord's Prayer. 

One more conflict yet awaited him ; and he who had 
so brilliantly represented the hierarchical party, was 
transformed by shifting circumstances into the cham- 
pion of liberty. Cyprian was anxious to preserve 
episcopal authority in its integrity, in opposition to 
encroachments from above as well as from below, and 
he was prepared to defend it against the Bishop of 
Rome as firmly as against the Presbyterian party. 
Thus, when a dispute arose between him and Stephen 
on the subject of the baptism of heretics, which he 
declared to be insufficient, he maintained his principle 
as tenaciously as he had held his ground against Feli- 
cissimus and Novatus. No consideration could make 
him yield. All who look upon the decisions of the 
Bishop of Rome as of final authority, must hold that 
the great Bishop of Carthage died a schismatic. But, 
on the same grounds, the whole Church of Africa in 
the third century merits the same appellation ; for at 
the second synod of Carthage, Cyprian, supported by 
the concurrence of a synod of the bishops of Asia 
Minor, caused his opinions to be adopted by all his 
colleagues. He shortly after wrote his letter to Fides 
on the Baptism of Children, and his treatises on 
Patience and Envy. 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 435 

The hour of final conflict for Cyprian was at hand. 
Valerian had just promulgated the edict of persecution. 
The Bishop of Carthage had a secret presentiment 
of his approaching end, and he looked forward to it 
with unmixed joy, for he knew that he would leave 
behind him a Church well-organised and victorious over 
schism. Xystus, Bishop of Rome, had fallen a victim 
in the catacombs, and Cyprian read in this death a 
prophecy of his own. He had already prepared his 
Church for persecution by his Exhortation to Martyr- 
dom. He himself was first exiled to Curubis, an 
obscure village in the neighbourhood of Carthage. 
There he was warned in a dream of his approaching 
end. He was brought back to the town, and confined 
in some gardens belonging to him, to await the pleasure 
of the new proconsul. Having heard that some lictors 
were about to seize his person, to carry him to Utica, 
whither that governor had gone, he hid himself in the 
city, being fully resolved to die in the place in which he 
had exercised his bishopric. He expresses this desire 
with sublime simplicity in the last letter written by 
him to his Church : " Word had been brought me, 
beloved brethren, that lictors were to be sent to convey 
me to Utica, and some dear friends urged me to 
leave my gardens, and hide myself in the city. I 
thought well to act on their advice ; for it is meet 
that a bishop should confess his Saviour in the city 
where he has exercised his office, that the glory of 
his good confession may be reflected on his people.* 
In truth, the words which a martyr-bishop speaks at 
such a moment, he speaks under divine inspiration in 

* " Quod congruat episcopum in ea civitate, in qua ecclesias 
dominicae praeest, illic Dominum confiteri." [ u Epist.," lxxxi. 1.) 



436 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the name of all.* The honour of our illustrious Church 
would have been compromised if I, its bishop, had 
placed myself, as it were, at the head of another Church, 
submitting to be condemned in Utica, and undergoing 
in that town the martyrdom which is to exalt me 
into the presence of God. No ; for my own sake, and 
for yours, I will confess Jesus Christ, and will suffer for 
Him, in your midst ;t I will go to my God amid the 
incense of your prayers, which must ascend to Him 
continually on my behalf. We shall await here in 
seclusion the return of the proconsul to Carthage, to 
learn from him the decision of the emperor with regard 
to Christian bishops or laics, and to say to him that 
which God shall at the moment give us to speak. And 
do you, my beloved brethren, preserve in peace the 
discipline founded upon the commandments of the 
Lord, as I have taught you both by word and practice. 
Let none of you cause any offence among the brethren, 
nor expose himself needlessly to persecution. It will 
be time to speak when you are taken and brought 
before the tribunal. Jesus Christ, who is in us, will 
speak for us in that hour ; He prefers a faithful testi- 
mony to rash imprudence. If there are any measures 
to be taken, we will decide on them together under the 
eye of God, before the proconsul shall have pronounced 
my condemnation. Dearly beloved brethren, may our 
Lord preserve you from all evil in His Church ! " 

This letter is the dying testament of Cyprian. It 
exhibits the whole man, with his natural prudence, 

* " Quodcunque enim sub illo confessionis momento confessor 
episcopus loquitur, adspirante Deo ore omnium loquitur." ("Epist," 
lxxxi. i .) 

f " Ouandoquidem ego et pro me et pro vobis apud vos confiteri 
et "ibi pati et exinde ad Dominum proficisci orationibus continuis 
deprecer." (Ibid.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 437 

which forbids the useless braving of persecution ; with 
his calm courage, his absolute devotion to the Church, 
for which he has lived and on which he is anxious 
to reflect the glory of his martyrdom ; and finally, with 
that concern for order and unity which so strongly 
characterises his whole career as bishop. These last 
words give us also a deep insight into the heart 
of Cyprian as a Christian ; they show his faith in the 
permanence of inspiration and his clinging to prophetic 
visions. They exhale, as it were, an odour of mystic 
fervour. 

When the proconsul returned to Carthage, Cyprian 
was brought before his tribunal. An immense crowd 
filled the prsetorium, brought thither partly by the thirst 
for vengeance, partly by the desire of witnessing a grand 
spectacle. The glory of the accused, his recognised 
and often proved authority in matters of dispute, the 
fame of his eloquence — all must have tended to stimu- 
late curiosity. While the wrath of the populace was 
roaring against him (to use the powerful language 
of Pontius), and while death-cries were rising from the 
surging masses of the crowd, he had the consolation 
of being surrounded by all the Christians in the city, 
who had hastened to the spot to sustain him by their 
sympathy and their prayers.* 

After his first hearing he was remanded to prison, 
and passed this last night with his brethren. The 
next morning he found the whole population of the 
city assembled, so as to witness every incident of his 
condemnation. When he arrived in the presence of 
the proconsul he was bathed in profuse perspiration, 
and a soldier offered to change garments with him. 
" It is a needless remedy," he answered, " for ills 
* Pontius, 14, 1$. 



438 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which will end to-day." The examination was short. 
The crime, indeed, was patent. " Art thou Thascius 
Caecilius Cyprian ? " asked the judge. " I am." " The 
most holy emperors command thee to sacrifice to the 
gods." " I shall not obey." " Have a care for thy 
life." " Carry out your orders. In so righteous a 
cause there is no need for deliberation." This short 
dialogue pitted the old claim against the new — the old, 
servile submission to the despotism of the State, against 
the rights of conscience, the rights of the individual 
whose citizenship belongs to a higher city. Sentence 
was at once pronounced. It described Cyprian as the 
standard-bearer of Christianity in Carthage, and thus 
paid him the truest homage, for no influence could 
equal his, and he had carried the Church on with him 
along the path of mistaken authority, no less than 
along the path of heroic devotion and self-sacrifice. 
He was beheaded the same day in the sight of all 
Carthage. His enemies thus used the best means 
to establish and extend his moral influence, and never 
was he more truly the head of the Church of Africa, 
than when the banner which he had been accused 
of bearing had been dipped in his blood. 

Proconsular Africa gave yet one more apologist to 
the Church — Arnobius of Sicca, who lived at the 
commencement of the fourth century. Arnobius was 
a popular rhetorician of a small town of Africa, at 
a time of deep literary decadence. We may easily 
imagine, therefore, what were the habits of thought 
and style acquired in such a school.* Christianity did 
not divest him of these characteristics ; and when, 

* " Arnobius sub Diocletiano principe Siccas apud Africam 
florentissime rhetoricam docuit." (St. Jerome, " De Viris Illustr.," 
lxxix.) 



BOOK II. — THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 439 

after attacking it in various writings, he adopted 
its belief, he defended the faith, as he had assaulted 
it, without dignity or true eloquence. The seven 
books of his Apology, written at the commencement of 
the persecution under Dioclesian, * deserve the severe 
sentence passed upon them by St. Jerome, when he 
charged Arnobius with being unequal and confused 
in style. t The author first defends the Church against 
the ordinary accusations of the pagans, he then endea- 
vours to establish the legitimacy of the Christian faith, 
and concludes by a violent, attack on paganism. The 
closing portion alone has any value; it contains some 
important information, showing how deep was the 
degradation of Rome at this period. But Arnobius, 
forgetting that there are, as St. Paul says, some things 
not lawful to be uttered, details without reserve, and 
in language often indecent, the foul offences of paganism 
against morality. We shall see that his Apology stands 
in strong contrast with the great Apology of Alexandria. 
Arnobius delights in vilifying and treading into the dust 
the nature of man. There could be no surer prepara- 
tion for religious despotism, which flourishes on the 
degradation of the soul and conscience. Such a book 
as that of Arnobius proclaims a new era. The Church, 
which is about to achieve a victory in the domain 
of external authority, is already riveting with hei 
own hands, the fetters which will rob her of her true 
freedom within. 

* We see in his book, " Disput. adv. gentes," iv. 36, that, in his 
time, the Christian temples and the copies of the sacred Scriptures 
were burnt, which points us to the date indicated. 

t St. Jerome, " Epist," xlvi. 



BOOK THIRD. 

THE ATTACK AND DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 
IN THE DOMAIN OF CONTROVERSY. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE ATTACK. 

§ I. Current Polemics.* 

The pagan reaction which we have described, was 
in itself an impassioned protest against Christianity. 
But so intense a hatred could not but find more open 
and vehement manifestation ; it expressed itself some- 
times in the murderous clamour of the crowd, sometimes 
in the light, envenomed arrows of sarcasm, sometimes, 
on a wider scale, in systematic attacks upon Christianity. 
Fierce and rude in the mouth of the plebeian or the 
villager, fine and ironical on the compressed lips of the 
well-bred scoffer, learned and didactic in the writings 
of the philosophers, this hatred is equally hot among 
all ranks and in all grades of culture ; popular fanati- 
cism and science, which have combined to re-establish 
paganism, make common cause against the common 
enemy. 

We shall not recapitulate the vile calumnies against 

* Beside the writings of the Fathers or pagan authors of the 
time, we shall cite from Tschimei J s work, " Geschichte der Apolo- 
getik." 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 44I 

the Christians, which found currency among the lowest 
of the people, and which le'd to the shedding of so much 
innocent blood. We have already alluded to them 
more than once in the history of the persecutions, 
which they did so much to provoke or to justify in the 
eyes of the ignorant masses. These accusations were 
founded on the recent origin of Christianity; on the 
baldness of its worship, which they characterised as 
atheism; on the pretended immorality of its disciples; 
on its noble independence of the State in matters of 
religion; and lastly, upon the calamities and scourges 
for which it was held responsible, on the pretext that 
it drew down the anger of the gods.* Such calumnies 
w T ere made for three centuries the pretext for the judicial 
conflict between the two religions. We shall notice 
here only those attacks which elicited in reply the 
Apology properly so called, that, namely, which is not 
a mere forensic plea. The modes of attack vary ac- 
cording to the position of the assailants, and it is very 
interesting to analyse, as it were, the coalition formed 
by the opponents of Christianity, in order to discover 
the various currents which thus mingle and become one. 
The objections of the philosophers were stated in the 
form of treatises, fragments of which have come down 
to us. These therefore can easily be known ; but apart 
from this systematic and studied opposition, there was 
yet another, which represented the current opinion 
of the cultivated classes, and must be distinguished 
from mere popular invective. Of this we find the 
scattered expression in the writings of the apologists 
of the Church, and we must endeavour to combine 
these fragmentary hints, if we desire to comprehend 
aright the various obstacles to the progress of Chris- 
* Tschirner, " Gesch. der Apol.," 223-225. 
29 



442 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tianity. The dialogue of Minutius Felix, which places 
before us a pagan of the middle class ignorant of all 
philosophy, gives us much valuable information as to the 
opinions that might at that time be entertained of the 
new religion, by those who were neither priests nor 
schoolmen. Cascilius, the opponent of the Christian 
querist, represents perfectly the man of the world, who 
belongs to the craft neither of priest nor writer, but who 
has derived his convictions or his prejudices from the 
social atmosphere of his age. We must not look for 
much logic from him ; he often expresses ideas contra- 
dictory of each other; but they all tend to the same 
conclusion — the rejection of Christianity. 

The language of the cultivated pagan betrays at once 
great moral and intellectual enervation. We are con- 
scious that he does not belong to an age of bold 
speculation, in which the mind of man is bent on 
investigating and explaining everything. Nor does 
he belong to an age of simple trust, in which all that 
is marvellous and poetical inspires faith and fervour. 
We are not dealing with childhood in its candour, nor 
with youth in its enthusiasm. Here is doubt mingled 
with superstition ; a prudent scepticism which dares 
not be true to its own consequences, which suddenly 
pauses on its path, to bow down before the first idol 
it meets, provided only the idol be of venerable antiquity. 
Let us not be misled. That genuflexion is not an act 
of mere hypocrisy, performed simply to deceive the 
spectators. No; it is a sincere act. The soul has not 
strength enough either to doubt or to believe thoroughly; 
it cannot rest either in negation or in faith; it vacillates 
between the two, or rather it combines and associates 
both. At heart there is no faith in the existence 
of religious truth, and yet the alternative of a frank and 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 443 

decided atheism is rejected. Probability is put in the 
place of certainty, and from this it is an easy step 
to substitute antiquity for truth : for let inherent 
grounds for belief be disallowed, and the balance of pro- 
bability is on the side of that which is old. Tradition 
is the crutch of halting creeds, which are no longer 
able to support themselves. Thus we shall find Caeciiius, 
after avowing absolute scepticism, casting himself with 
closed eyes into the arms of the religion of his fathers. 
If such a course seems full of self-contradiction, it is 
from an intellectual, not from a moral point of view, 
for moral feebleness preventing solid convictions, is per- 
fectly in harmony with the cowardly desertion of 
received opinions. Cascilius acts in one and the same 
spirit, whether he expresses universal doubt or makes 
an unreserved surrender to the gods of his country. The 
bold affirmations of Christianity are as repugnant to him 
as its hardy negations. This diseased soul, loving its 
sickness, and, better still, its ease, shrinks from the manly 
effort needed in order to grasp a new truth or to reject 
old error. " How great is the distance," says Cascilius, 
" between human weakness and the divine things we 
inquire into ! * We cannot know either that which 
is far above our heads in the heavens, nor far beneath 
our feet in the lowest deeps. Such knowledge is for- 
bidden to man, and it would be impious to seek to attain 
to it. Of two things, one : either truth, ever uncertain, 
is veiled and hidden from us ; or (which is more 
credible), fortune, unfettered by any law, governs accord- 
ing to its own fitful caprice. "t This convenient scepticism 

* " Cum tantum absit ab exploratione divina human a, mediocri- 
tas !" (Minutius Felix, u Octav." v.) 

\ " Adeo aut incerta nobis Veritas occultatur et premitur ; aut, 
quod magis credendum est, variis et lubricis casibus, soluta legibus, 
fortuna dominatur." (Ibid.) 



444 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

does not inspire toleration even in Caecilius; the blast 
pagan is irritated by the presence at his side of men 
who claim to resolve the great questions which weary 
him, and he is especially indignant that some men 
without culture, strangers to letters, pursuing menial 
callings, should dare to speak with absolute certainty 
of the first principle of all things, unappalled by the 
majesty of the theme, while philosophy, after the lapse 
of so many ages, and the tentative systems of so many 
schools, still utters dubious oracles on the subject.* 

It might be imagined that, starting from such a point 
as this, Caecilius would be logically led to include 
paganism in the same sweeping anathema with 
Christianity, but he obeys dialectic laws of a peculiar 
kind, which rest on a logic of feeling rather than 
of thought. He has not the force of character 
required to make a man consistent with himself, at 
the risk of compromising ease and comfort. His 
logic fails because his courage fails, and after a lofty 
tirade against those who pretend to possess certainty 
in matters of religion, he himself pays his devout 
homage to the religion in which he was born. He says : 
" Since there is nothing certain in nature except 
chance, is not the tradition of our fathers the best and 
most venerable guide we can follow in the pursuit 
of truth ? Let us cleave to the religion they have 
transmitted to us ; let us worship the gods we have 
been accustomed to worship from our childhood, gods 
which are familiar to us, and let us beware of enter- 
ing into discussions about them."t Caecilius, though 

* " Indignandum audere quosdam et hoc studiorum rudes, lite- 
rarum profanos, certum aliquid de- summa rerum et majestate 
decernere." (Minutius Felix, " Octav.," v.) 

f " Ouanto venerabilius ac melius antistitem veritatis majorum 
excipere disciplinam ? religiones traditas colere ? ,; (Ibid.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 445 

he again expresses on several occasions his impious 
doubts, nevertheless presents a utilitarian apology for 
paganism ; he proves from history that prosperity has 
never come to those who have forsaken paganism. His 
argument amounts to this : Nothing can be less certain 
than the foundations of the ancient faiths, but since, 
on the other hand, it cannot be proved that they are 
absolutely false, and since they seem to have conduce'd 
to the prosperity of the country, the safest plan is to 
hold by them. Clearly such an adherence as this 
to paganism is the last term of scepticism, which, 
having doubted all else, concludes by doubting itself. 
If at the outset, the pagan showed 'irritation at the 
strong affirmations of Christianity, he now maligns 
it because it undermines the base of the worm-eaten 
edifice of the ancient religions. "Since all nations," 
says Cascilius, " agree to recognise immortal gods, 
though a cloud of mystery conceals their origin and 
nature, I cannot endure, amidst this universal consent 
of mankind, the audacity or impious wisdom of these 
innovators, who seek to overthrow or to enfeeble 
a religion so old, so useful, so salutary .* One is compelled 
to groan at the sight of a league formed against the 
gods, by men belonging to a miserable, illegal, accursed 
sect, men who make disciples of the lowest of the people, 
of silly credulous women, easily misled, if only because 
of their sex. Thus is formed an impious conspiracy. "t 
Csecilius repeats, with additions, the common calumnies 
about the nightly assemblies of the Christians ; he thus 
himself unblushingly exhibits a credulity more senseless 

* " Hanc religionem tarn vetustam, tarn utilem, tarn salubrem, 
dissolvere.'"' (Minutius Felix, '■' Octav.," ix.i 

f " Homines deploratse, illicitae ac desperatae factionis grassari 
in deos.' J (Ibid.) 



446 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

than that of any woman in the world, and shows how 
passion can stultify a naturally acute ar.d discerning 
spirit. 

The blending of scepticism and of servility which 
characterises this man, who evidently occupied a good 
position in Roman society, was doubtless common to 
many of his contemporaries, for it belongs to every age. 
Many are always found ready to profess a graceful 
doubt, without formally breaking with religion, and while 
fully counting on its support in case of extremity. The 
pagan priests had no surer auxiliaries than these pru- 
dent philosophers. They knew that such philosophers 
were sure to return to them at last ; and that, be their life 
what it might, in death they would cling to the priests, 
not from any mere human reverence, but prompted by 
that fear of the unknown, which the soul is not strong 
enough to brave alone in the last assaults. 

After reproaching the Christians with believing in 
a new God, and overthrowing the national religion, 
Csecilius proceeds to an examination of their doctrines. 
It is at once obvious that he is but ill-acquainted with 
them, and has no appreciation of their connection 
or inner meaning. His judgment of them is dictated 
by-the most superficial notions. He does not rise for 
a moment above his low and earthly point of view. 
Sceptic as he is, he does not concern himself at all with 
the nature of things, with the adaptation of a doctrine 
to the conditions of man's mind or soul. He has no 
faith in truth itself; he does not ask, therefore, if a 
belief is true and reasonable, but simply if it can boast 
of that which attracts the eye — strength, brilliancy, 
popularity, success ; it is from this outer side alone 
that he judges. Thus, when he approaches the grand 
idea of the Divine unity, he does not inquire, like the 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 447 

illustrious philosophers of antiquity, if it is well-founded 
on grounds that reason and conscience approve. These 
considerations appear to him supremely indifferent. 
Listen to his words : "Where is He," he asks; "this 
one, sole, forsaken God ?* What republic, what king- 
dom has acknowledged Him ? He has not even found 
an asylum in Roman superstition." A solitary and de- 
serted God cannot be a true God : this alone is enough 
to condemn him. The pagan cannot heap enough 
ridicule on the idea of a Providence without which 
nothing can happen. Such a deity he stigmatises as 
importunate, and curious even to insolence ; and he 
asks how, while watching over the whole, He could 
occupy himself with the details ; or how, while absorbed 
in minutiae, He could watch the course of the universe ? 
The Christian religion, thus held accursed by the 
world, pronounces, in return, a curse upon the world, 
and proclaims its approaching destruction in the flames 
of a terrible fire, while it promises a resurrection to its 
own followers. "Two-fold folly!" exclaims Caecilius, 
faithful to his materialistic scepticism, which can never 
pass the limits of visible realities. " The Christians 
proclaim an end to the sky and stars, which abide when 
we are gone, and they promise eternity to their dead, to 
beings born to perish. "f It is the immortality of the 
individual which shocks the pagan. He only mentions, 
that he may set it aside, the moral argument derived 
from the Divine justice, to which it must be impossible 
finally to treat alike the guilty and the innocent ; and 
he concludes his arguments against the resurrection, 

:: " " Unde autem est, quis ille. aut ubi ? Deus unicus, solitarius, 
destitutus." (Minutius Felix, " Octav.," x.t 

f "Gemina dementia! Coelo et astris qu^c sic relinquimus ut 
invenimus interitum denunciare, sibi mortuis aeternitatem repro- 
mittere." (Ibid., xi.) 



448 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

or, more properly speaking, against the immortality of 
the soul, with these words, worthy of an Epicurean : " So 
many generations have followed each other, so many 
ages have rolled away, and who has ever come back 
from the tomb?"* To such a man immediate success 
is the sole criterion of the good and the true. A reli- 
gion which brings in its train a long series of humilia- 
tions and sufferings, which has the cross for its symbol, 
and the track of which can be traced by the blood 
of its votaries, is necessarily to him a false religion. 
Csecilius cannot conceive of a God in whose sight the 
vanquished cause may be after all the right. "Where," 
he asks, " is that God who can bring succour to the 
dead, while He does nothing for the living ? Do not the 
Romans rule and reign without Him ? Do they not 
govern the world and you yourselves ? "t 

To one who thus regards suffering as a curse and 
shame, austerity could not appear other than a crime. 
Accordingly, Caecilius has only indignant words for 
the morality of the Christians. "You abstain," he 
cries, "from lawful pleasures; you eschew feasts and 
shows and public rejoicings. You will not crown your 
heads with flowers, % you use no perfumes to anoint 
your bodies. Pale-faced tremblers, § you call indeed 
for pity ! Miserable men, who will find there is no 
resurrection and who refuse to live now ! || Cease at 
length to interrogate the Lord of the heavens. Be 
content with looking to your feet."H Caecilius concludes 
by parodying the saying of Socrates : " That which is 

* Minutius Felix, " Octav.," xi. 

f " Ubi Deus ille qui subvenire reviviscentibus potest, viventibus 
non potest?" (Ibid., xii.) J "Non floribus caput nectitis." (Ibid.) 
§ " Pallidi, trepidi." (Ibid.) 

|| " Ita nee resurgitis, miseri, nee interim vivitis." (Ibid.) 
IT " Satis est pro pedibus adspicere.^ (Ibid.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 449 

above us is not for us."* The judgment passed upon 
Christianity by this pagan, vindicates, by its utter want 
of comprehension, that great word of the Master: "I 
am from above, ye are from below." In truth, the new 
religion, regarded from below, must necessarily appear 
in this absurd light. We catch in the tones of Caecilius an 
echo of the mocking laugh which interrupted Paul on the 
Areopagus, when he began to speak of the resurrection. 
Caecilius was called Legion, and he has initiated us into 
the current ideas of the cultivated class of his time. 

Christianity encountered even more deadly opposition 
among the Jews than among the pagans. t The treatise, 
"Ad Judaeos," ascribed to Tertullian, and the Dialogue 
of Justin with Trypho, give us an insight into the 
polemics of the synagogue. The principal points were 
three. First, the Jews reproached the Christians with 
abandoning or rejecting the glorious institutions of the 
Mosaic economy, and with thus uniting themselves with 
paganism. " That which most astonishes us," they 
said, " is that you, who pretend to exceptional piety, 
differ in nothing from the pagans. You observe neither 
feasts nor sabbaths ; you have no circumcision ; you 
flatter yourselves that you please God by neglecting all 
His commands. "| In the second place, the Jews, while 
admitting that the prophets had indeed foretold a 
Messiah, would not acknowledge that these prophecies 
found their fulfilment in Christ. His lowliness was 
repellent to them.§ They turned to their sacred books, 

* "Quod supra nos, nihil adnos." 1 Minutius Felix, "Octav./'xiiD 

t See Tschirner. " Gesch. der Apol.," 181-189. 

X Ovdk cnWavoiTS d—b tojv Wvmv tuv vfisnpov 8iov ofiojg eXTri&re 
Tii'^aarcu ayaOov rivbg Trapa rov 6eov fit) Toiovvrug avrov rag tvroXcig. 
(Justin, " Dial, cum Tryph.," 227.) 

§ "• Non et nunc adventum ejus expectant, nee alia magis inter 
nos et illos compulsatio est, quam quod jam venisse non credunt. ,; 
iTeitullian, "Apologia," xxi.) 



450 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and gave special prominence to the oracle which 
declared that the coming of the Messiah should be 
preceded by the return of Elias. They appealed also to 
the brilliant representations given in the Old Testament 
of the age of Messiah, and compared with these glowing 
pictures the sorrowful circumstances of the life and 
death of Christ. " Instead of being arrayed in glory," 
they said, " your pretended Christ is so covered with 
reproach and dishonour that He has fallen under the 
most accursed penalty of the Divine law, being put to 
death on the cross."* The Jews thus laid their own 
crime to the charge of the Saviour of the world, and 
true to their materialistic theocracy, rejected Him 
on the ground of His sufferings, as if these had not 
been foretold by Isaiah the prophet. Finally, the doc- 
trine of the Divinity of Christ clashed with their 
rigid monotheism. They could not admit that He 
was God with God, as the Fourth Gospel expressed 
it.f Such were their principal objections, diversified 
indefinitely by the subtlety of their minds and the 
cunning arguments of their rabbis. They attacked, 
not unskilfully, the exegetical interpretations of the 
Old Testament current in the Church, and impugned 
the credibility of the Gospel narrative. 



§ II. Polemics of the Philosophers in opposition to 

Christianity. 

(a.) Lucian of Samosata. 

Every one of the various schools which exercised 
an influence on pagan society made an attack upon 
Christianity from its own special standpoint, and 

* 'E<rravpb)9t) yap. (Justin, p. 249. Compare p. 3 1 7.) f Ibid., 274. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 451 

the Church was thus called upon to defend itself 
against adversaries of every description. Impious 
Epicureanism, proud Platonism, oriental theosophy, 
and the subtle and mystical pantheism of Alexandria, 
— each in turn battered on the breach ; and the 
purer the paganism, the more bitter and zealous 
was the antagonism to Christianity. No rivalry 
could by possibility exist between cynical atheism 
and Christian spirituality, as war is not likely 
to break out between nations placed at the two ex- 
tremities of the world. But, on the other hand, 
Neo-Platonism and Christianity, deep and radical as 
were their differences, both offered a response to the 
same aspirations, and the philosophers of Alexandria 
knew well that they could not achieve the moral 
conquest of the world, unless they supplanted the 
adherents of the new religion. Therefore Porphyry, 
a man of far higher type than Lucian, will be a much 
more determined enemy of the Church ; but his very 
hostility does honour to the Church, since it shows 
that he has a true appreciation of its power, while 
the contemptuous cynic confounds it in scorn with 
the low superstitions of his time, on which he heaps 
his merciless mockery. 

In order rightly to comprehend the attitude of 
Lucian with regard to Christianity, we must have 
some idea of his opinions on religion in general, for 
Christianity is to him only one particular form of 
religious folly, and he does not accord to it even the 
distinction of a more marked opposition, or of more 
bitter irony. We can conceive that the men who were 
not carried away by the reaction of paganism, and 
who had preserved their freedom of thought in this 
unparalleled irruption of the superstitions of every 



452 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

land, would find abundant matter for ridicule in the 
strange spectacle presented at that time by the Greco- 
Roman world. Like a guest who has retained the cool 
use of his faculties in the midst of a scene of riotous 
feasting, these men were at once disgusted and amused 
by the wild manifestations of the religious feeling, 
which assumed constantly more and more grotesque and 
monstrous forms. To one who has no comprehension 
of the aching desire and infinite sadness of the human 
soul at a distance from God, there is no comedy more 
ludicrous than that presented by these great religious 
crises, in which the most visionary notions find a 
favourable reception, and every impostor is sure of 
success with some minds influenced by hope and 
desire. Scorners have no eyes to discern the element 
of grandeur in all such crises, which accomplish 
their mission of burying an old, and giving birth 
to a new world. They see only the incongruity of 
the blending of expiring religions, the illusions of 
charlatans and magicians trading on public credulity. 
Their attention is arrested only by the scenery of the 
theatre, the strange costumes of the actors, and they 
pay no heed to the religious drama which is being 
enacted before their eyes, and of which the most 
important and thrilling crises always coincide with 
those periods of renovation and general expectancy, 
when the minds of men are predisposed to all illusions 
and chimeras. A thin sardonic smile curls their lips, 
if they are men of taste and refinement ; they laugh, 
with a broad boisterous laugh, if they are open and 
avowed cynics. They are not satisfied with ridiculing 
the follies of their own age alone ; they take advantage 
of the discredit into which the ancient faiths have 
fallen, to attack these also without scruple ; and as 






BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 453 

they put the new or strange gods which have obtained 
favour with their contemporaries, in the place of 
the old, they effectually serve the cause of impiety. 
Humanity has no worse enemies than these pitiless 
scoffers, who rejoice over every downfall. The de- 
fenders of the new truths which come to replace old 
errors, are sometimes tempted to seek support from 
these men, in their warfare with superstition and 
prejudice, and to borrow some of the biting sarcasms 
flung at themselves. Thus the Fathers more than 
once used the weapons of Lucian in their polemics 
with paganism. It was the worst policy, for Lucian, 
like all his class, was not satisfied with, rooting out 
the weeds from the field ; he carried away with them 
the fruitful soil. He destroyed not superstition only, 
but the very faculty of faith. The human soul, when 
he has breathed upon it, resembles a desolate region 
sown with salt ; true, no more weeds appear, but 
absolute barrenness reigns in their stead. There is one 
thing more deplorable than believing in error, and 
that is to believe in nothing ; this is the essential error, 
the fundamental aberration of the soul, the invincible 
obstacle to truth. In our opinion, therefore, Lucian 
did more harm to Christianity by the manner in which 
he undermined pagan superstitions, than by his direct 
attacks. Such a man was the most formidable of 
all foes, even when he was destroying that which 
Christianity also aimed to destroy, because he des- 
troyed at the same time that which is the starting- 
point of all truth, that which may be called the 
elementary religious feeling — the care for eternal 
things, the thirst for the infinite and the divine. We 
shall not confine our observations to those of his 
writings alone which assail Christianity; we shall cha- 



454 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

racterise the whole of his works, because there is 
scarcely a page which is not an insult to religion in 
itself. We shall convincingly show that Christianity is 
never justified in seeking pioneers or allies from the seat 
of the scornful ; it will find its true supporters, not 
among those to whom human misery is a jest, but 
among those who mourn and weep. The voice that 
prepares the way of the Lord comes from the desert 
of conflict, not from the festal halls where wine-bibbers 
hold their impious revelry. 

Lucian was born at Samosata, in Syria, in the year 
137 after Christ. His long career lasted till the com- 
mencement of the following century, and he thus 
witnessed the action of the two-fold impulse, which 
on the one hand attracted the minds of men to the 
religion of the future, and, on the other, led them back 
to the worst superstitions of the past. He travelled 
so much both in the East and West, that he had 
opportunities of observing all the eccentricities of his 
generation. No man was better acquainted than Lucian 
with the age in which he lived — if indeed that can be 
truly called acquaintance with the age, which consisted 
in seeing only its ridiculous or scandalous side, and 
ignoring all its deeper and higher impulses. Gifted 
with a quick and biting wit, saved from the prejudicial 
influence of the rhetoricians by his genius for satire, 
and raised above vulgarity by the elegance and polish 
of his style, Lucian knew how to give artistic value 
even to the wildest licence of his impure imagina- 
tion. He chose in his Lucius, in his Dialogues 
of Courtesans, and in his Dialogue of the Loves, 
to grovel in the vilest mire of paganism. An avowed 
Epicurean, ignoring every notion of morality, desirous 
solely to please and to amuse, he took delight in 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 455 

drawing those licentious pictures, which are read with 
avidity in times of moral turpitude. These infamous 
pages ' occupy in literature the place which certain 
frescoes from Pompeii occupy in art ; they are the 
emblazoned advertisements of sin and degradation. 
This vein of impurity, running through all the writings 
of Lucian, does not suffice, unhappily, to impart to them 
a marked originality of character, for it is to be traced 
in almost all the writers of the Decline. That by 
which he is mainly distinguished is what may be called 
his universal impiety, his contempt of all greatness, 
goodness, or glory. He was the most accomplished 
disciple of the nil admirari school. If we except a few 
thoughtful and sensible pages on the manner of writing 
history, in which he argues very ingeniously against 
the oratorical style, and represents the office of history 
to be simply that of a polished and brilliant mirror, 
reflecting objective facts — a theory eloquently developed 
by an illustrious writer of our day ; if we except, again, 
some elevated views of a sound philosophy, in the 
Dialogue of Hermotinus,* the whole of Lucian's works 
appear as one continuous and cruel strain of mockery, 
charming and sparkling enough when directed at follies 
and absurdities which deserve to be ridiculed, but 
unjust and calumnious, when aimed at other subjects, 
and in all cases alike the expression of a malicious and 
ungenerous spirit. When he flings his merciless jests 
at the rhetoricians — those traders in words who sell only 
adulterated food, tricked out with much spicery; when 
he denounces, in his Alexander, the rogueries of the 
magicians, and betrays some of the impositions of their 
allies, the priests, one cannot but approve. His ruling 

* M. Talbot, page 7 of his Introduction to Lucian, appears to 
us to attach too great importance to these words. 



456 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ambition, however, is not to' be a clever comedist and 
an acute critic ; his great aim is, we repeat, to subvert 
all greatness, human or divine ; it is to sap or sully 
all admiration ; it is to destroy with the idol, every 
thought of the divine, to overthrow with superstition, 
all faith in a higher world, to annihilate philosophy no 
less than sophistry. The true object of his hatred 
is the ideal — everything that lies beyond the realities 
of earth, everything that stirs the soul of man, every- 
thing that makes him feel after and seek anything but 
pleasure, everything that breaks in upon the voluptuous 
revelry of the senses, the highest life of the Epicurean. 
His attacks upon paganism are animated by the same 
spirit. He has a two-bladed sword: with the one blade 
he strikes at superstition; the other he plunges deep 
into the noblest fibres of the heart. Lucian's work 
may be compared to the immortal poem of Dante, for 
its breadth and variety of subject ; it is a gigantic 
comedy embracing three worlds; but there is nothing 
divine in it, and it rings only with bitter and insulting 
laughter. It is not Virgil, the poet of sacred sorrow, 
who acts as guide to the implacable scorner, as to the 
great Florentine; it is Diogenes, or Menippus the cynic, 
whose envenomed tooth fastens on all that has been 
held worthy of honour, adoration, and respect, in earth 
and heaven. Let us rapidly follow his footsteps through 
the circles of the pagan world ; we shall then com- 
prehend the judgment passed by such a man upon 
Christianity. 

The Dialogues of the Dead are devoted to a review 
of all the glories of ancient Greece. The heroes of 
fable, as well as the princes of fame, pass successively 
before the cynic, and not one escapes the brand. 
Achilles, Ajax, Agamemnon, are shorn of their vaunted 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 457 

valour. Alexander is dragged to the gemonise. Poetic 
and historic greatness are alike made victims. Lucian 
finds a keen delight in rending the shining veils of 
Homeric poetry, which enveloped the heroic and 
fabulous commencement of the history of Greece, as 
the empurpled clouds enshroud the landscape at the 
dawning. Lucian dispels with a breath all these 
visions of enchantment. " Know," says Euphorbus, 
the old Trojan hero, when speaking of the grand 
epopee of Homer, — " know that there was nothing 
in reality so marvellous. Ajax was not so great, nor 
Helen so beautiful, as you have been led to think."* 
Tn one of his cleverest dialogues, a man named 
Mycellus, transformed into a cock, rouses an unfor- 
tunate sleeper from the most delicious dream by his 
piercing cries : such is the part played by Lucian with 
regard to Greece, which had so long been held under 
a poetic spell by the legends of its heroic age. The 
words which the satirist puts into the mouth of the 
poor awakened dreamer apply perfectly to himself. 
"Bird of ill-omen, with the sharp shrill voice," exclaims 
the sleeper, " thou hast awaked me out of a dream 
of bliss. May Jupiter confound thee !"t Jupiter has 
too much to do to ward off the darts of raillery 
aimed at himself, to think of confounding any offender 
whatsoever. The heroes are treated with moderation 
compared with the deities. In the Dialogues upon the 
gods they are depicted in the most grotesque colours. 
At one time we are made spectators of a domestic 
quarrel between Juno and Jupiter; the latter appears 
as an old libertine, irritable and weak, the sport of the 
vilest passions. Venus is made to reproach Cupid with 

* 'Eyw 8s tovovtov vol $i}jxi inrepfyvsq fxrjdiv yevkoOai tot's. (Lucian. 

Didot Edit., 498.) f Ibid., 491. 

30 



458 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY" 

all his irreverences towards the father of the gods, and 
asks how he could dare to instigate Jupiter to the most 
shameless actions, the most degrading metamorphoses. 
Has not the great god been seen to assume, in turn, the. 
horns of the bull and tne wings of the swan or of the 
eagle ? Has he not even been known to transform himself 
into a shower of gold ? Esculapius and Hercules fight 
like two gladiators in their cups, and Olympus displays 
all the allurements of a resort of doubtful fame. The 
vein of satire which runs through all Lucian's treatment 
of the gods, is especially manifest in two dialogues, 
entitled the Tragic Jupiter and Jupiter Confounded. 
The former is his master-piece. We give a rapid 
analysis of it, because it shows so admirably what was 
the spirit in which its author assailed the ancient 
beliefs of his country. 

A dispute is supposed to have arisen at Athens about 
the gods. Their cause is to be solemnly pleaded 
before the whole people. Hence there is a lively stir 
in Olympus. Jupiter is in great alarm, for the advocate 
to whom is confided the cause of the gods is none of 
the strongest, and on the success of his pleading 
depends the support of the immortals, who, if he fails, 
may find a dearth of incense and fat things. Jupiter 
makes bitter lamentation, and in the excess of his 
terror, speaks in verse like a tragic actor. Juno, 
who sees him in extreme agitation, says to him sharply, 
" I perceive, father, that thou hast some new love in 
thy head." Jupiter puts her to silence by uttering 
these significant words: "The affairs of the gods are 
at the worst."* The discussion between the Stoic 
Timocles and the Epicurean Damis, is fraught with 
terrible danger for Olympus. What can be done in 

* 'Ev laxaroiQ ra Oewp irpayixara. (Lucian, Didot Edit., 474.) 



BOOK III.— THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 459 

self-defence ? The general council of the gods is 
convoked. They assemble tumultuously, clamouring 
for nectar and ambrosia.* Jupiter explains the state 
of the case. Strange to say, the Epicurean finds an 
unexpected ally in Olympus. Momus, his worthy 
patron, declares that he shares the ideas of Damis. 
He reproaches the gods with their heedlessness in 
leaving good men in misfortune, while the wicked 
triumph. " Let us own," he says, " that we give 
attention only when it is to be ascertained whether 
sacrifices have been made to us or not."t The other 
gods speak in their turn. Neptune uses the language 
of brute force. " I think," he says, " that we must 
make an end of this Damis. "J Was not this the great 
argument of the age — that which paganism perpetually 
opposed to the new religion ? Thunder, water, any 
means is good in the eyes of the sea-god to enforce this 
conclusive logic; it is an expeditious method of disposing 
of unpleasant controversies. " Thy counsel savours of 
the tunny," Jupiter replies, and addresses to Neptune 
this remarkable observation : " It is a base idea to 
exterminate an adversary before the fight, for he dies 
without being vanquished, leaving the quarrel uncertain 
and pending still. "§ 'The pagan world had done well 
to bear in mind this excellent maxim in its conduct 
towards the Christians. Apollo speaks in his turn, and 
sorrowfully admits that the advocate of the gods does 
not know how to express himself with clearness; upon 
which Minos rallies him without mercy, as being him- 
self the god of ambiguous oracles. Hercules proposes 

* Iiov al f./car6fi(3ai. (Lucian, Didot Edit, 477.) 
■f Td S' dXXa Kara povv Qeptrai tog dv tvxV' (Ibid., 48 1.) 
X 4»J/-it Sslv top Anjj.LV tovtov eK7rodiov 7roirieao9ai. (Ibid.) 
§ Kai KOfiidy 7ra%w TrpoavatptTv rbv avTay(ovi<JTr)v, <1)Q cnroOavg dr)TTi\TO's i 
&/Ji$r)puTTOV in kcu adi&Kpirov KciTaknrLov top \6yov. (Ibid.) 



460 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY, 

nothing less than to hurl down in fragments on the 
head of the philosopher who thus troubles them, the 
portico under which the discussion takes place. Jupiter 
observes that the proposed method is too plebeian. 

The gods, having come to an end of their expedients, 
are constrained to lend an ear to the dispute which is 
just commencing with great warmth. Jupiter advises 
his counsel to multiply injurious epithets. "Thy 
strength is in slanders," he whispers.* This kind of 
apology has been only too keenly relished in every age. 
The advocate of the gods, embarrassed by the objec- 
tions urged by his opponents against divine providence, 
appeals at once to brute force. " What ! " he exclaims 
to his hearers, "you endure such words as these, and 
do not stone the wretch ?"t Damis objects very aptly 
that to the gods must be left the charge of avenging 
themselves. The discussion on providence is pro- 
longed, but goes more and more against the champion 
of Olympus. In vain he appeals to the order subsisting 
in the world ; the Epicurean replies that there is no 
evidence whatever that this is an order established by 
the gods; the common consent of the nations to such 
a doctrine proves nothing, for their religious ideas are 
full of contradictions : oxen, monkeys, and cats have 
as many worshippers as the Olympic deities. He must 
be a fool indeed who would trust to such lying oracles, 
and deem them the utterance of the voice of the gods. 
The believer asks the sceptic if he has ever seen a ship 
sailing over seas without a pilot ? Damis replies that 
never was ship with a pilot so badly steered as the 
accursed galley in which they were embarked. Inter- 

* Lucian, Didot Edit., 485. 

f Tavra ccKOvovreg dve^icyOi icai ov KctTaXevcriTi rbv akirrjpiov. (Ibid., 

4850 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 461 

spersed through all these polemics are the sarcasms of 
Momus. The gods comfort themselves by expressing 
the hope that this unpleasant colloquy will not be 
heard of beyond the bounds of Attica. But Jupiter 
shakes his old head in sore chagrin. " I would rather," 
he says, " have one defender like Damis, than six 
hundred orthodox Babylonians." 

In this dialogue, Lucian aims a blow not only at 
pagan superstitions, but at that which is the basis of 
all religion, — providence and divine justice ; beneath 
the unhealthy excrescence, his lancet touches the very 
centre of the life. The dialogue entitled " Jupiter 
Confounded," presents similar features ; it is religion 
in itself, rather than this or that religious form, which 
the cold-blooded sceptic endeavours to destroy. Here 
the debate is not carried on simply between two phi- 
losophers ; Jupiter comes himself into direct issue with 
a cynical philosopher. The philosopher asks if it is true 
that necessity is above him, the great god, and that he 
is compelled to acknowledge the power of the Fates ? 
The majestic Olympian is obliged to reply in the affir- 
mative. The cynic boldly concludes from this, that 
men must be very mad to offer lavish sacrifices to gods 
who are no gods.* The Fates alone ought to be 
worshipped, since they are the great sovereigns of the 
world. Jupiter objects that sacrifices ought to be 
offered in gratitude to the gods. The philosopher asks 
what is the ground for gratitude ? How are we indebted 
for happiness to gods who cannot bestow it on them- 
selves ? Does not everything happen by destiny ? 
Are the- gods aught else than the docile ministers of 
fate ? Jupiter, finding himself in a difficulty, calls down 

* Ei TTavrijiv ai MoTpai icpa-ouiri, rivog 'iveica v/xlv ol dvOpotTroi Ovofiiv. 

(Lucian, Didot Edit., 469.) 



462 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

his thunders upon his adversary, who rejoices with a 
smile that those very thunders are not at the god's 
own disposal, and that he cannot cause them to descend 
without the permission of the Fates. He concludes by 
jeering at the notion of future punishments. What 
justice is there in chastising crimes irresponsibly com- 
mitted? " Minos," he says, "ought not to punish any, 
for we men do nothing of our own volition ; we are sub- 
ject to the laws of an inevitable necessity. If any one 
commits a murder, it is destiny which commits it ; if 
sacrilege, man does but what he must ; hence it follows 
that if Minos will judge equitably, he should punish 
destiny instead of Sisyphus, and the fates in lieu 
of Tantalus. What wrong, in truth, have these* men 
done ? They have but obeyed orders." The logic 
of Lucian is irreproachable; the dogma of fatalism was 
at the foundation of Hellenic paganism, and the old 
Egyptian sphynx lay hidden behind the altar of the gods 
of humanism. Only for a long time, by a happy 
breach of logic, the Greek genius had rebelled against 
this crushing dogma of necessity — the bequest of the 
East to the West. Conscience had lifted up its voice, 
moral freedom had asserted itself, and a purer religious 
ideal had arisen. In the time of Lucian this was no 
longer the case. Greece, in her decrepitude, was 
returning to the bondage of her infancy ; she was 
bowing her neck again beneath the yoke of fatalism, 
inseparable from natural religions. Lucian did not 
fail to turn this fatal dogma to the account of irre- 
ligion and impiety, and he presents it without any 
counterpoise; he pushes it to its farthest consequences, 
and proclaims the irresponsibility of man. With 
the freedom of the soul, he overturns the foundation- 
stone on which all moral and religious faith must rest. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 463 

Philosophy provoked his ridicule no less than religion. 
Here again it is not so much any special system which 
he attacks, as that lofty aspiration of the human soul, 
which struggled for expression in all the schools. He 
jeers at philosophy in itself, that is, at the desire and 
research after the highest truths. If he had contented 
himself with ridiculing the inconsistent philosophers 
of that age, he would have done nothing to call for 
reproach. It is the privilege of a writer of satire 
to expose the weaknesses of men who grossly belie 
their teaching by their conduct ; like the philosopher 
represented in Timon of Athens, who preaches sobriety 
in the midst of an orgy, and who is carried to bed by 
those whom he has catechised and is still catechising 
in his drunken state. The portrait drawn of this false 
philosopher is full of truth and humour. " Behold," 
he says, "the man of sober attire, of modest bearing, 
who wears his wisdom on his sleeve. Listen to him 
in the morning. How full the stream of his eulogiums 
on virtue, his invectives against laxity of morals ! But 
see him just returned from the baths, and seated at the 
festal board, see him when he has drunk from the 
brimming cup which a slave hands to him, and you would 
say he must have imbibed a draught of the waters 
of Lethe, so rapid is the change. He does now all that 
in the morning he condemned. He seizes like a bird 
of prey upon the viands, feasting himself alone ; he 
greedily serves himself from the dishes placed before 
his neighbours, and, chin deep in sauce, he devours like 
•a dog. He bends over the cups as eagerly as if he were 
seeking virtue therein.* He is careful to leave nothing 
that can be eaten. When he has drunk deep, and 

* KaOairtp iv toXq Xoirdai rr)v apsrrjv zupriGs.iv 7rpQGC0Kui>. (Lucian, 

Didot Edit., 36.) 



464 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

his tongue is loosed by the quick pulses of the wine, 
his morning prelections on sobriety come back to his 
memory, and he repeats them with a thick and vinous 
utterance. At length he is carried from the table, 
clinging with both hands to the fair performer on the 
flute. Who can contest with him the palm of falsehood, 
audacity, and avarice ? He is the prince of flatterers 
and perjurers. Falseness goes before him, impudence 
follows him. This, however, is the wise and perfect 
man, the best friend of truth! " 

Lucian cannot long rest satisfied with a strain of satire 
so just as this, for it is not so much the bad philosophy 
as the good, which he would fain wound mortally with 
his barbed arrows. His famous dialogue, the "Auction 
of the Philosophers," is prodigal of sarcasm upon the 
noblest as well as the vilest representatives of ancient 
philosophy. Thus to confound all systems, good or bad, 
is the surest method of discrediting philosophy alto- 
gether. We are introduced into a large slave-market, 
where Mercury proceeds, in the name of Jupiter, to 
the sale of various philosophers. Socrates, Epicurus, 
Pythagoras, Diogenes, Heraclites, Chrysippus, Pyrrho, 
are sold, and each tries to overcharge himself to the 
buyer. Lucian turns this scene of traffic into a sort 
of philosophical comedy, in which each system is made 
the subject of biting criticism. The critique on Pyrr- 
honism is excellent ; it is the irreproachable portion 
of the dialogue. 

Buyer. What dost thou know ? 

Pyrrho. Nothing. 

Buyer. How so ? 

Pyrrho. Because nothing seems to me to have a real 
existence. 

Btiyer. Are we nothing, then ? 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 465 

Pyrrho. I cannot say. 

Buyer. Thou knowest not if thou art aught or 
naught ? 

Pyrrho. That less than aught else do I know. 

Buyer. O everlasting doubter ! but of what use this 
balancing of things ? 

Pyrrho. I compare the various reasons of things ; I 
weigh them, balance them, and when the two scales are 
equal, I am of course unable to decide. 

Buyer. What is the end of thy science ? 

Pyrrho. To know nothing, to listen to nothing, to see 
nothing.* 

The purchaser, after concluding his bargain, puts to 
Pyrrho this question : "Art thou sure that I have bought 
thee ? " 

Pyrrho. That is not clear. f 

Buyer. How, then ? I paid down the money, 

Pyrrho. I withhold my opinion. Still, I doubt. 

Lucian perpetually contrasts the common sense of 
the unlettered multitude, with the metaphysical notions 
which are in contradiction with it, whether by their 
subtlety, or by their unnatural elevation. Metempsy- 
chosis, Plato's theory of ideas, the imperturbable 
serenity of the Stoic, — all are in turn the subjects of 
his satire. The bad spirit in which this dialogue is 
conceived is especially manifest in the part devoted 
to Socrates. 

Mercury. Who buys this pearl ? 

Buyer. What is thy best quality ? 

Socrates. I love children. 

Buyer. How mayst thou be bought ? I want a 
pedagogue for a fine child. 

* 'H apaQia, kclI to fi!jT£ dicoueiv [iqTS bp$s. (Lucian, Didot 
Edit., 153.) f 'Acr,\ov. 



466 THE EARE\ YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Socrates. For that I have no equal. It is not with 
the bodies, but with the souls I am in love. 

Buyer. Thou speakest things incredible. 

Socrates. I swear it by the dog and the plane-tree. 

Buyer. By Hercules! thou dost call on strange gods! 

Socrates. They are gods, however. 

Buyer. Thou art right ; but how earnest thou to know 
them ? 

Socrates. I dwell in a city which I have formed for 
myself, in a new republic to which I have given the 
laws. 

Buyer. Cite me one of these laws. 

Socrates. Hear what I have decreed about women : 
they are common to all. 

Buyer. What is the epitome of thy life ? 

Socrates. Ideas are the forms and exemplars of things. 
All that thou seest, — the earth, the sea, — has its super- 
sensible and invisible idea. 

Buyer. Where are these ideas ? 

Socrates. Nowhere, for if they were anywhere, they 
would cease to be. 

By such ridiculous traits does he characterise the 
greatest school of antiquity ; its illustrious head is 
dragged down into the mire, and the worst calumnies 
of his murderers are accepted and complacently 
enlarged upon. All the philosophers are sold for an 
insignificant sum. One alone is purchased at a reason- 
able price, this is Pythagoras. The reason for this is 
not to be sought in his boasted austerity, in the purity 
of his manners, in the elevation of his doctrines. 
No; the scale rises for him, because it has been 
discovered that he has (so runs the legend) a golden 
thigh. Could any stronger expression of contempt for 
the wisdom of the ancients be devised ? We may be 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 467 

always sure of this, that hatred and scorn of philosophy 
are fatal moral symptoms, since they denote complete 
obliviousness of a higher and divine world, and lead to 
an abject materialism. So far from being favourable 
to Christianity, as has been sometimes thought, such 
a disposition deprives it of its surest ground of appeal 
in the human spirit. The attitude of Lucian with 
regard to the new religion gives sufficient evidence 
of this.* 

We have already observed that Lucian is distin- 
guished from other writers of his time who did battle 
with the Church, by a comparative moderation, which 
has more in it of scorn than of indulgence. The great 
soul of Tacitus, passionately attached to the old Roman 
fatherland, saw in Christianity only an impious innova- 
tion, tending to sap the foundations of. a social order, 
which was the more deeply regretted in contrast with 
the hated present. Lucian was too indifferent to the 
destinies of his country to share such feelings, and he 
was too far removed from Christian spirituality, to 
enter into conflict with it as a rival sect. He regarded 
Christianity as only one of the extravagant manifesta- 
tions of that craving for some new thing, which gave 
his contemporaries no rest, and made them the ready 
followers of any religious impostor. His treatise on 
Alexander, the false prophet, was destined to unmask 
the cunning practices of oriental magic, and to show in 
their true colours, the gross frauds of those daring 
magicians who imposed so largely on public credulity. 
From pagan superstition he passes, in his " Peregrinus," 
to Christian superstition. 

# See an excellent article on this subject, by Planck, in " Studien 
und Kritik," p. 826, 1851. ("Lucian unddas Christenthum"). See also 
Baur, " Das Christenthum der drei ersten Jahrhundert.," 396-402. 



468 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

" Peregrinus " cannot be regarded as a simple narra- 
tive. If it is certain that the hero of the adventure 
narrated by Lucian had a real existence, it is no less 
certain that the adventure itself is an invention of the 
satirist, who is seeking to cast ridicule on the courageous 
death of the Christian confessors.* Lucian must have 
met with more than one heroic witness for Christ in 
his many travels. He had passed a considerable 
time in Asia Minor, and had been a witness of the 
facts reported to Trajan by Pliny. He must have 
possessed also some acquaintance with the Holy Scrip- 
tures, as is shown by many passages of his writings. f 
The colours for a farcical picture of the new religion 
were therefore already mixed on his palette. 

Let us gi-ve a rapid sketch of this curious composition, 

* Aulu-Gelle thus speaks of Peregrinus : " Cui postea cogno- 
mentum Proteus factum est, virum gravem atque constantem. 
Multa, hercle, dicere eum utiliterethonesteaudivimus. (" Noct. attic. 
Epitome," VIII. iii.) He does not say a word of his suicide. The 
other writers who speak of it, have evidently derived their informa- 
tion from Lucian. (See Planck, 836-843). Lucian himself, in other 
works, speaks with great moderation of Peregrinus. Thus in 
the " Dialogue of the Fugitives," Jupiter acknowledges that Pere- 
grinus did not merit death, and that he was after all a brave man 
(icai tovto fx(v"i(rwc). It is, therefore, evident that Lucian has so 
metamorphosed the facts of the true story, as to make his Peregri- 
nus a fictitious personage. His narrative contains also many 
traits indicative of a fictitious recital ; such as the extreme length 
of the speeches, the rapid advancement of Peregrinus from one 
office to another in the Church, and the strange course pursued 
towards him. 

fin the " Philopseuclos," x., wonderful cures effected by the in- 
vocation of a sacred name are related. In chap, xi., the. healed 
man carries his bed away with him, as in Matt. ix. and Mark ii. 
In chap, xiii., mention is made of a man who walks upon the 
waters. In chap, xvi., there is the healing of a demoniac, which 
recalls many features of the evangelical narrative. In the "Verse 
Historian," II. ii., the description of the capital of the Isle of the 
Blessed reminds us of that of the heavenly Jerusalem in Rev. xxi. 
(See Planck, article quoted, 886.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 469 

that we may estimate the character of the polemics of 
Lucian. Peregrinus, a man sunk in debauchery and 
stained with every crime, strangles his own father, and 
then becomes a wanderer and a fugitive from place to 
place. At length he arrives in Palestine, where he 
comes in contact with the Christians.. He rapidly 
obtains credit among them, and is promoted to the 
highest offices in the Church. Cast into prison for 
his connection with a proscribed religion, he is loaded 
with tokens of affectionate enthusiasm by his new 
brethren. He receives their visits and their presents. 
Hardly escaped from prison, he recommences his 
travels and his course of infamy. From a Christian 
he becomes a cynic, and his stay in Italy is signalised 
by gross outrages offered by him to the emperor. He 
concludes his vile career by causing a funeral pile to be 
reared for himself at Elis, which is to be the pedestal 
of his glory, for he ascends it in great pomp before 
the whole of Greece assembled for the public games. 

Such is a general outline of Lucian's derisive treat- 
ment of Christianity. If we examine in detail the 
passages in which he depicts the adherents of the new 
religion, we find a singular combination of impartiality 
and injustice. The facts themselves are not distorted, 
except in the final scene ; they are wrongly interpreted 
rather than misrepresented. Thus we find no trace 
in the writings of Lucian, of the atrocious calumnies 
circulated in his time about the secret worship of the 
Christians. All that phantasmagoria of the popular 
imagination which caused so much bloodshed, exerts 
no influence over his mind. He coolly narrates what 
he has witnessed, without any addition except occa- 
sional satirical remarks. Thus he involuntarily renders 
the highest testimony to the sect which he seeks to 



470 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

decry. Others will see the true greatness in that which 
seems to him simple madness ; the tribute which he 
renders to the tenderest Christian virtues, is of so much 
the more value because it is so unwittingly paid. In 
truth, all the accusations brought by Lucian against 
the Christians, may be traced back to one comprehen- 
sive charge — their credulity. This was the intolerable 
offence to an Epicurean like Lucian. The Christians 
are men of faith, while he is a man of sight ; between 
him and them these is all the distance which divides 
the most exalted spirituality from the most abject mate- 
rialism, hemmed in by the narrow range of the visible, 
and never seeking to rise above it. " These miserable 
men," he says, " have persuaded themselves that they 
are immortal and will live for ever.* This blind credu- 
lity, which leads them to believe in another life, has 
made them the victims of the strangest imposture. The 
Founder of their religion is an obscure sophist, who was 
crucified in Palestine for having introduced a strange 
worship into Judaea. They adore this crucified male- 
factor, and for the faith of Him have forsaken the 
brilliant religion of the Greeks, and embraced a new super- 
stition, "t There would have been something wanting 
to the glory of Christ, if any other judgment than this 
had been passed upon Him by such a man as Lucian. 
He goes on to say that the Christians, not content with 
thus placing their confidence in this first impostor, 
bestow it with equal readiness upon any one who 
attempts to lead them away. " If there comes among 
them an impostor, a crafty rogue, he can at once enrich 
himself by trading on their credulity, while he laughs 

* Tlf7reiKaai yap cwtovq 01 KaKodal/.iov(Q to jjlIv o\ov aOavaroi t<T&c6aai. 
(" Peregrinus," xiii. ; Lucian, " Opera," 69.) 
f Tbv Sk aveo~ico\o7rio~iikvov ao^iarrjv avrwv TrpoTKvvovau (Ibid.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 471 

in his sleeve at their simpleness." In this way Pere- 
grinus made his fortune. Lucian represents him as a 
second Christ ; his authority over his new brethren 
at once became so great that they considered them- 
selves mere children beside him. " He was by turns 
prophet, introducer of mysteries, head of the assembly ; 
he interpreted their sacred books and wrote others, 
so that many regarded him as a god, a legislator 
and high-priest equal to the crucified one."* Peregri- 
nus thus serves a double purpose ; Christ and His 
worshippers are both made the objects of ridicule in his 
person. The imprisonment of the impostor gives occa- 
sion for a fresh display of satirical power in the writer. 
Lucian represents the Christians as feeling themselves 
wounded in the person of Peregrinus, and putting forth 
every effort for his deliverance. "From early morn- 
ing a crowd of old women, widows and orphans, was 
gathered around the prison. t The principal persons 
of the sect passed the night with him, having bribed 
the gaolers with money; they had all sorts of viands 
brought to them in the prison, and read their sacred 
books. Clearly that which Lucian here describes is one 
of those sublime Agapce, secretly celebrated by the con- 
fessors in the darkness of their dungeons, during the 
times of persecution. The fact that the Christian re- 
ligion was of so compassionate a nature that it attracted 
to itself the suffering and sorrowful, widows and 

* Kai tl yap; iv (3pa"%(X iraldag avrovg airscprivs. Trpo(pi]-i]g Kai Qiaadpxyg 
Kai Zwaywycvg Kai Trdvra p.6vog avrbg ujv Kai ra>v l3ij3\wv rag /.lev etrjydro 
Kai SitadQei, 7ro\\dg ds avrbg Kai £vvtypa<ps Kai ug Qtbv avrbv ekuvoi 
ijyovvro Kai vofjioQert] expCovro Kai TrpoaraTriv kirkypatyov. rbv /xsyav youv 
6khvov iri <Jsj3ov<ri, rbv dvQpunrov rbv iv ry UaXaianvy avacrKoXoTriTOsv-a, 
on Kaivi)v ravrrjv tz\iti)v tiatjyayev sg rbv (3iov. (" Peregrinus," xxxi. ; 
Lucian, " Opera," 691.) 

t "H ye d\Xi] GepaTreia Tcdaa cvv gttov&j kyiyvtro Kai eujQtv fdv ivQvg i)v 
bpav Trapa rrp decT/xtoTrjpiq) TTEpi/.i8V0VTa ypaSia x*iP a Q Tivdg Kai Traicia bpipavd. 

(Ibid., xii.) 



472 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

orphans, and that under its influence even an obscure 
prison-cell could be transformed into a sanctuary 
of Christian love, only moved the scorn of the Cynic. 
He passes by this spectacle of tender human charity 
with a sneering toss of the head, as he had already 
passed by the exhibition of Divine charity on the cross ; 
but he has drawn to it none the less the admiring gaze 
of after ages. "Nor is this all," he adds. "Several 
cities of Asia sent deputies to Peregrinus in the name 
of the Christians, to render him service as helpers, 
advocates, and comforters. No words can describe the 
eagerness to aid, which they display under such circum- 
stances; to say all, in one word, they count no cost. 
Large sums of money thus found their way to Pere- 
grinus." This passage gives emphatic witness not 
only to the charity exercised towards each other by 
members of the same Church, but also to the close bond 
of holy union, which subsisted among the Christians of 
every land. It affords a beautiful practical illustration 
of the words of the apostle: " If one member suffer, all 
the members suffer with him." The man of the world 
could form no conception of such a bond, and this 
grand catholicity of the Christian brotherhood only 
moved him to sardonic mirth. " Their first legislator," 
he says, with a sneer, " has persuaded them that they 
are all brethren.* They sell their goods, and have all 
things in common, so entirely do they rely on His 
words. Christian brotherhood lies beyond the range 
of Epicurean vision ; to the man who lives only for 
himself, disinterested love must seem the height of folly. 
The greater the self-devotion, the more irrational does 
it appear in his eyes. Martyrdom is the climax of 
unreason in Lucian's view, and he makes it the mark 

* 'Qq ddfXcpol -Travreg elev. (" Peregrinus," xiii.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 473 

for his sharpest arrows of sarcasm. All the latter part 
of " Peregrinus " is a parody of the tortures of the 
Christians. Some have disputed the correctness of this 
interpretation, because Peregrinus, on coming out of 
prison, attaches himself to the sect of the Cynics ; but 
if it is borne in mind that Lucian regards Christianity 
less as a special sect than as one of many curious mani- 
festations of the religious malady of the time, — a malady 
which seems to him common to all schools but his own 
— it will be seen that it was a matter of indifference 
to him whether his attacks fell upon the Christians or 
the Cynics. In truth, he aims a blow at both sects 
at once, and confounds the holiness of the one with the 
false austerity of the other. It is of small consequence, 
then, that Peregrinus passes from the school of Christ 
to that of Diogenes ; in Lucian's estimation he is still 
pursuing the same course. Beside, it was perfectly 
simple to suppose in an age of universal eclecticism, 
the fusion of two systems in the same individual. 
If Lucian makes Peregrinus speak and act as a Cynic, 
he makes him die as a Christian. Possibly it is with a 
view to offering the more unrestrained insults to him as 
a Christian, that he turns him into a Cynic. Not believ- 
ing in the vile calumnies cast upon the Church by the 
ignorant masses, he would not have dared so completely 
to blacken one of the representatives of the new religion, 
if he had not first wrapped him in the soiled and tattered 
mantle of Diogenes. Here again we have what may be 
regarded as a fresh and indirect tribute to Christianity. 
It is impossible also not to recognise in the death of 
Peregrinus, a facetious skit on two martyrs with whom 
Lucian had certainly had some acquaintance in Asia 
Minor ; many features in his narrative recall the deaths 
of Ignatius and Polycarp. The deputations sent from 



474 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the Churches to Peregrinus, his ardent impatience for 
death, bring to mind the glowing letters of the Bishop 
of Antioch; the* scene of the fiery pile of Elis, and the 
eagerness of the friends of the deceased to gather up 
his ashes, are clearly but a travesty of the acts of the 
martyrdom of the Bishop of Smyrna. We may observe, 
in conclusion, that in the former part of his work, 
Lucian especially mentions the contempt of suffering, 
leading men to surrender themselves voluntarily to 
death, as one of the most unaccountable caprices of the 
Christians. But is not this precisely the case of Pere- 
grinus ? his death can be regarded, then, as nothing else 
than a caricature of martyrdom. This comes out beyond 
a doubt from an examination of the details. The 
funeral pile has been erected at a distance of twenty 
stadia from Olympia. Scarcely has the moon risen, 
wmen Peregrinus advances in his ordinary attire, and 
surrounded by the chief men of his sect, just as the 
Christian confessors were followed by their brethren 
to the threshold of the arena. He lays down his wallet 
and burns some incense, and then he disappears in the 
flames. His adherents, gathered around the fire, stand 
motionless, and mark their grief by solemn silence. " I 
met," says the ironical narrator, " a crowd of people 
going to see this spectacle. They flattered themselves 
they should find Peregrinus still alive. . .The most part 
turned back when I told them the thing was done, 
except those who cared not so much to see the sight 
itself as the spot where it had taken place, and who 
were anxious to gather up some remains from the fire." 
Who can fail to recognise in this description those 
Christians of Smyrna, who piously collected the yet 
smouldering ashes of the venerable Polycarp ? . . . . 
The same narrator goes on to say: "To please the 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 475 

imbeciles, ever greedy after the marvellous, I added 
from my own invention some tragic details ; for example, 
that at the moment when the flames caught the pile and 
Peregrinus cast himself into them, there was an earth- 
quake, accompanied with a fearful rumbling sound. . ."* 
This last touch is a scoff not at the disciple but at 
the Divine Master himself, for it contains an evident 
allusion to the extraordinary circumstances which ac- 
companied the death of the Saviour of the world. 

The whole of Lucian's polemics against Christianity 
thus culminates in a parody of martyrdom. To the 
man whose sole care was to deck with the flowers of 
style, the grand maxim of materialism, " Let us eat and 
drink, for to-morrow we die," the Christian, voluntarily 
choosing death rather than life, is not only the most miser- 
able, he is the most senseless of mankind. The scene of 
the confessor's martyrdom is, next to the cross of Christ, 
the most powerful protest of the invisible against the 
visible, of spirit against matter, of holy love against 
selfish ease ; in a word, of Christianity against Epicu- 
reanism. That which was the great stone of stumbling 
to the Epicurean was the great strength of the Christian : 
attack and defence must both be concentrated on this 
point. The Christians could make no better reply to 
their scoffing adversaries than to continue to suffer and 
to die for the truth. Their triumph was sure, for, after 
all, human conscience is on the side of the devotee and 
not of the scoffer. 

(b.) Attacks of Celsus on Christianity. 

Christianity was to encounter in the ranks of eclectic 
philosophy an adversary, not more acute and quick- 
* " Peregrinus," xxxvi.-xxxix. Talbot's translation. 



47^ THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

witted, but more able and implacable, than Lucian. 
Celsus, who lived under the Antonines,* appears to 
have professed a system composed of the most hetero- 
geneous elements, since it held in combination Platonism 
and Epicureanism. This motley union presents nothing 
really astonishing in an age when the most lawless 
syncretism prevailed, throwing down all barriers and 
effacing the dividing lines of all doctrines. We shall 
not find in Celsus either the classic Platonist or the 
ordinary Epicurean. Platonism is somewhat depreciated 
in his system, and the Epicurean philosophy somewhat 
elevated. He has not the lofty spirituality of a faithful 
disciple of the Academy, nor the gross materialism 
of the true followers of Epicurus. It was to him that 
Lucian addressed his work, " Alexander, the False 
Prophet. "t Representing Gnostic philosophy in its 

* Celsus cannot have written before the time of Marcus Aurelius, 
since he speaks of the Marcionites, a sect which only appeared in 
the year 142 after Christ ; and of the Marcellians, Gnostics of the 
sect of Carpocrates, who came to Rome in the year 157. (Irenasus, 
" Contra Haeres.," I. xxiv.) The details which he gives of the 
Christians compelled to hide themselves to escape death, may refer 
perfectly well to the reign of Marcus Aurelius. (" Contra Celsum," 
VIII. 69.) 

f Several Church historians have refused to admit that the Celsus 
who wrote against Christianity was the same Celsus, the friend of 
Lucian and the Epicurean, of whom the great apologist speaks. 
(" Contra Celsum," I. 8.) They object, firstly, on the ground of 
the plainly Platonic principles which were at the basis of the system 
of Origen's adversary ; they further draw attention to the fact, 
that the defender of. Christianity speaks only with some hesitation 
as to the person of his opponent. They conclude from these 
considerations that there was more than one Celsus — an Epicurean 
Celsus and a Platonist of the same name. The following pas- 
sage, in which Origen seems to suppose that some Celsus, other 
than his usual opponent, might have written against Christianity, is 
appealed to in support of this hypothesis : El ye ovtoq kern rai 6 Kara 
Xpwriavwv dXKa 8vo f3ij3Xia cruvra^aQ. " If, at least, it is he who has 
written two other books against the Christians." (" Contra Celsum," 
IV. 36.) It is argued from this passage that Origen admitted 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 477 

most glorious tradition and in its most popular school, 
he repudiated all that was of foreign extraction, both 
the magic of Asia, against which he had himself written 
several books, and the new doctrine sprung from Judaea. 
The cross was, in a twofold aspect, folly to such 
a man. In the first place, it rendered valueless all the 
subtle and brilliant dialectics which were the pride 
of the Platonists, requiring alike from learned and 
unlearned, the faith of a little child; and, secondly, it 
demanded of the Epicurean, the man of pleasure, self- 
denial and devotion, even unto death, to the cause 
of Christ. It was as severe upon the mere gratifica- 

the possible existence of a second Celsus, equally bitter against the 
new religion, but who attacked it from a different standpoint. It 
would then be easy to suppose that the great apologist had more 
than once attributed to the Platonist the ideas of the Epicurean, 
and the difficulty would disappear. But in Book VII. lxxvi., 
Origen speaks to his friend Ambrose of other books in which 
Celsus the Epicurean attacked Christianity ; it follows that in the 
former passage he was also speaking of the disciple of Epicurus, 
and that he merely alluded to other writings of the same kind of 
which he was the author. If it is asserted that the association of a 
modified Platonism with a mitigated Epicureanism, in the second 
century after Christ, is impossible, it must be admitted that Origen 
was completely mistaken upon this point, for he unquestionably attri- 
butes to the same man ideas borrowed from both schools. Now, 
we cannot believe that a man of such high philosophical ability 
would have assigned to the same individual two doctrines which 
would have been in his time utterly irreconcilable. Since he repre- 
sents Celsus as an Epicurean, it follows that the blending of a form 
of Platonism with a form of Epicureanism was then possible. How 
can any one affirm the contrary, of an age when all ideas and all 
religions were in a state of fusion ? Who can be certain that he has 
exhausted all the possible combinations of this universal syncretism? 
Besides, Celsus had selected the oriental and pantheistic aspect 
of Platonism, which could very well be combined with Epicu- 
reanism. The philosopher who placed man lower in the scale than 
the brute was a very lax disciple of Plato. We hold, then, to the 
hypothesis of Origen, which still seems to us the most plausible. 
(See the discussion of this point in Neander, " Church History," 
I. 169, and in Baur, " Geschichte der drei erst. Jahrhund.," 371.) 
Both historians draw a conclusion, the opposite of our own. 



478 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tion of the intellect as of the senses. Such a religion 
must, at any cost, be shorn of the prestige it had 
gained ; it must be branded afresh with the ignominy 
of its origin, and made once more a post of infamy, 
upon which dangerous innovators deserved to be 
crucified like their Master before them. This was the 
pious task to which Celsus devoted himself. His book, 
which he entitled " The Words of Truth,"* is a master- 
piece of able and impassioned argument ; so far at 
least as we can judge from the fragments handed 
down to us by Origen.t The keen instinct of hatred 
gave him remarkable clear-sightedness; he at once 
discerned the points of attack most favourable for the 
assailant. He collected in his quiver all the objections 
possible to be made, and there is scarcely one missing 
of all the arrows which in subsequent times have 
been aimed against the super-natural in Christianity. 
Detailed discussion of texts, broad philosophical theo- 
ries, piquant sarcasm, eloquent invective, — all are ap- 
pliances at his command. Nor does he scruple to have 
recourse to the bad faith which wrests and falsely 
colours facts, and reconstructs history according to 
the requirements of party polemics. J To render his 
task more easy, he purposely confounds Christian doc- 
trine with the heresies in which its principles were 
misrepresented. § The contest i*s never allowed to flag; 

* 'A\r)9r)g \6yog. 

f These fragments we find scattered throughout Origen's Great 
Apology. Baur has analysed them with his habitual acuteness. 
(Work quoted, p. 371 and following.) 

X Origen gives us a striking instance of this distortion of facts. 
(" Contra Celsum," II. xxiv.) Celsus, when ridiculing the agony 
of Christ in the garden, carefully avoids citing those words of 
sublime obedience which mingled with his groans. He frequently 
thus mutilates texts. (See I. 63 ; II. 34.) 

§ "Contra Celsum," VI. 24. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 479 

Celsus does not attempt to preserve the attitude of 
an impartial judge, his hatred makes this impossible: 
again and again we find him breaking the thread of 
a dispassionate discussion of exegesis, to make in the 
most direct manner passionate appeals to Christ Him- 
self. This uncontrollable vehemence accounts for the 
absence of method by which his work is characterised.* 
He did not allow himself time to form his accusations 
into a logical chain ; they struggled for utterance like 
long-imprisoned waters ; and as Origen has well said, 
hatred and wrath know no law. This lawlessness 
and confusion were, however, only on the surface ; 
beneath there was a severe logic in the polemics of 
Celsus. Desiring to make his book a vast repertory 
of all the assaults upon the new religion, he does not 
rest satisfied with the objections amply supplied to 
him by his own philosophical point of view ; he is 
well aware that Judaism is the foremost foe of Chris- 
tianity alike in date and in rank : he knows that no 
hostility will ever surpass that of the synagogue towards 
a creed which it regards as a vile apostasy. The 
coalition of Pilate and Herod is renewed in the work 
of Celsus ; only, in the place of a worn-out sceptic 
inclined to indulgence, we have an evil philosopher 
full of spleen ; in the place of an ambitious king, who 
has sold himself to the alien, we have a fantastic scribe. 
Christ is brought into the presence of a sophist and 
a rabbi, into the presence, that is, of the two schools 
which have always been most bitterly hostile to Him. 
Celsus commences by bringing accusations against 
the Gospel from the standpoint of a degenerate 
Judaism. He assumes the mask of a Jew, to use 

* IToXXd svpyg ovyKix v l x *- VbJ Q T<p KtXffy dp^xiva Si oXrjg (SioXov. 
(" Contra Celsum," I. 40.) 



480 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Origen's expression,* and plays his part with much 
skill. He postpones, till the occasion comes for 
speaking in his own name, the discussion of the prin- 
ciples of monotheism. He admits for the moment that 
which he will presently deny ; he first makes use of 
the Jew, to rid himself of the Christians, and when 
this is accomplished, he will turn upon the Jew and 
in him strike a blow at theism, which is to him the 
abhorrent basis of both the religions of the Bible. 
Celsus, with true judgment, does not put into the 
mouth of the defender of Judaism the keen and close 
arguments, or broad erudition of a Greek philosopher ; 
he uses the Jew as the type of that unintelligent 
conservatism which makes the mind a petrifaction 
of the past. His scribe reproaches the Christians with 
allowing themselves to be absurdly deceived by Jesus, 
and with having forsaken the religion of their fathers 
by changing their name and mode of life.t Well 
versed in the holy books, as became a doctor of the 
law, the Jew set forth by Celsus enters into a minute 
discussion of texts, compares various documents, and 
makes them nullify each other. It is by exegesis 
that this objector seeks to discredit the Gospel narra- 
tive, and he spells it out as a faithful disciple of the 
letter which kills. Convinced that the Christians will 
fall slain by the sword of their own Scriptures, he 
perpetually wields against them the sharp two-edged 
blade which is to pierce them through.! 

First the crafty rabbi, studiously confounding the 
four canonical Gospels with the apocryphal Gospels, 

* 'EyKaXsX t<£ 'I)]gou 6 Kt.\<70(; cia rot) iovda'iicov 7rpo<J0J7rov. ("Contra 

Celsum," II. 41.) 

f $>t]<jiv avrovc KaraXirrovrag rhv Trarpiov vofiov, Kcd aTrrjVTOnoXrjtcLpai 
i.i(; aXKo ovojxa, kcu uq aWov j3lov. (Ibid., II. I.) 
X Ay rot yap iavTo'ig 7T£pi7ri7mr£. (Ibid., II. 74-) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 481 

at that time very numerous, asserts that the sacred 
books of the Christians had undergone numberless falsi- 
fications. " Like men," he says, " who, in a state of 
intoxication lay hands upon themselves, they have 
modified and entirely changed, three or four or even 
more times, the text of the Gospels, with a view to 
obviate objections brought against them.* . . . But they 
have taken their precautions so ill that they have left 
still innumerable contradictions in the narratives for 
the authenticity of which they plead.'' The Jew passes 
in review these supposed contradictions, placing side 
by side the various accounts of the several Gospels. 
Nor is he satisfied with raising critical doubts as 
to the value of the documents ; he constantly impugns 
the subject-matter itself. It is not enough for him to 
prove that no reliance can be placed on Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, or John ; he pursues with his bitter 
sarcasms the Divine hero of the story. He carefully 
avoids any discussion of the prophetic oracles, to which 
the Christians appealed in opposition to the adherents 
of the synagogue, and by which in very truth they 
smote their antagonists with their own sword. The 
Jew of Celsus passes by in perfect silence, the exact 
declarations of the Old Testament with reference to 
the Messiah ;t he justifies his fellow countrymen in 
their unbelief, and simply draws the conclusion that 
the Christians have wrongly interpreted the prophets. 
" How," he asks, "can it be explained, that we should 
have covered with reproach and dishonour Him whose 
coming we were to announce to all mankind, and 
whose righteous judgments we were to proclaim 
against the wicked ?" After thus simplifying his task, 

* "lv tx oiev ~i°°£ T °v£ &&yx ov G ofivsiaOat. (" Contra Celsum," II. 27.) 
Ibid., I. 49. 



482 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

he does violence to the pages of the sacred writings 
one after another. The two genealogies of the Gospels 
do not detain him long; he does not appear to have 
perceived all the difficulties involved in this formidable 
critical problem. He contents himself with giving 
emphasis to the contrast between a reputed origin so 
glorious, and the low estate of the mother of Christ.* 
He seeks to degrade the Virgin of Bethlehem by 
making himself the echo of the vilest calumnies as to 
the birth of her first-born son ; he does not hesitate to 
trace it to a guilty connection with a Roman soldier.t 
" This is a slander raked out of the mire of the street," 
justly remarks Origen.^ The flight into Egypt strikes 
him as supremely ludicrous. " What need hadst Thou 
to flee ?" he asks the infant Jesus. " Was it to 
escape death ? But a God has no death to fear. . . . 
Could not the great God, who sent two angels to 
rescue Thee, have preserved His own Son safe and 
sound in Thy house ?"§ This journey into foreign 
countries was turned to account, however, by the 
founder of the new religion. " Brought up secretly 
in Egypt, He there learned to work miracles, and was 
thus enabled on His return to pass Himself off as 
God." || This charge of sorcery recurs frequently 
in the writings of Celsus. We shall see that he 
presently brings it forward in his own name. " Must 
we believe," adds the soi-disant Jew, "in all the 
charlatans who practise enchantments, and take them 
to be gods ?"H The divinity of the Saviour is the sub- 
ject of the concentrated malice of the representative 
of the synagogue. " If it is enough to prove godhead, 

* " Contra Celsum," II. 32. f 'Art/iwc gkotiov i\>-vvr}oz rbv 'l-qaovv, 

(Ibid., I. 28.) I Ibid., I. 39. ( § Tav idiovviSv. (Ibid., I. 66.) 

|| Oibv Si kiceivag rag tivvctfxtig lavrbv avdkopivovTa. (Ibid., I. 38.) 

H Ibid., I. 68. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 483 

that a man should ascribe his birth to an intervention 
of Providence, then any one of us may proclaim himself 
a god. Such a privilege is common to all.* All 
nations have had their apotheoses ; the only difference 
between the Christian doctrine and other religions, 
is, that Christ has done less to deserve deification than 
any of the heroes of antiquity. Such beings as Minos 
and Amphion have rendered far greater services than 
He. What hast Thou done, then, so noble, so beautiful 
in word or deed, O Christ, though the Jews in the 
Temple besought Thee to show a sign of Thy divinity ?"t 
After discussing the principal facts of the Gospel 
history, the scribe expends his most bitter irony on 
the account of the Passion. The sponge dipped in 
vinegar is truly held by his hand a second time in 
bitter scorn to the Christ on the cross. First of all, 
Christ could not have announced His coming death 
to His disciples; for if He had foreseen, He would have 
evaded it. "Where is the God, where is the genius, 
where is the prudent man, who, foreseeing a calamity, 
would not use every endeavour to escape it if he could, 
but would rush into it headlong ?"J Such an objection 
is full of force to a man who regards all self-devotion as 
simple folly. " If a God had predicted these things," 
resumes the Jew, " it was necessary that they should 
be accomplished. This God, then, constrained His 
own disciples, with whom He ate and drank, to 
trample on every notion of justice and right. He 
ought surely to have shown most of all to His own, 
that good-will which He testified to all. Was a true 
man ever known to lay an ambush for those with whom 

* " Contra Celsum," I. 57. 

f 2ii di) ri Kakbv fj QavjxdaLOv epycf rj Xoyy Tr£7roh]naQ ; (Ibid., I. 68.) 
X Ti£ av Oidg, r) daifuxjv, r\ avdpunog (ppovipog avvkwiTrTtv olg 7rpocn7tiaraTO ; 
(Ibid., II. 19.) 



484 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

he lived in intimacy ? Yet this is what was done by 
this God ; and, what is more absurd, He laid snares 
for His friends to make them traitors and impious."* 
Such a charge, which would be meaningless in the 
mouth of a pagan fatalist, was truly characteristic of 
the mind of a Jew, and might seem at first hard to 
meet. It was of especial importance because it im- 
pugned the perfect holiness of the Saviour. t The 
polemic shows himself equally an adept, when he 
endeavours to prove that the death of Jesus Christ 
cannot be regarded as a punishment voluntarily 
assumed by Him. In fact, if He died because He 
willed to die, He was not punished; the cross was then 
the crown of His desires. J This Jew of Celsus — the 
worthy scion of his forefathers, the mockers around 
the cross — follows the Redeemer of the world step 
by step along the path which led Him to Calvary, 
and has a jeer for each article of anguish. He 
enters with Him the garden of Gethsemane ; with 
a dry eye he beholds that agony, with a heart unmoved 
he listens to those groans ; and when he sees the 
Saviour prostrate in the dust and bedewing it with 
drops of blood, he bursts into this cruel irony : " See 
Him, hear Him, lamenting, weeping, crying with a 
loud voice to be delivered from the fear of death !"§ 
The Jew enacts his part consistently throughout. His 
fury is as fierce as that of his countrymen who beheld 
the crucifixion ; the most sublime and melting scenes 
of the Passion have no power to disarm his bitter 

* Avtoq Bcoq roiQ ax>VTpcnr'bZ,oi^ lire^ovXtvce, 7rpoSoTag Kal Svcrcrefielg 
7roLojv. 1" Contra Celsum," II. 20.) 
t 'Ey/caXfi Ttp 'lrjcrov ws fit) dsi^avri kavrbv 7cavrwv drj Kdieiov KctTaptiovTa, 
(Ibid., II. 41.) 

X ArjXov on Qi(j) ovn Kal fiovXopiivy ovt aXyciva, ovt dvtapa r\v to. Kara 
yvioprjv xpupeva. (Ibid., II. 23.) 

§ Tt ovv TTOTViaTcti Kai odvptTcii ; (Ibid., II. 24.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 485 

hatred. The spectacle of Christ dragged from one 
tribunal to another, draws from him only such words 
as these : " How can He be regarded as a God who 
has not kept one of His promises, and who, after being 
confounded by us, and sentenced to be worthy of death, 
sought the most obscure hiding-place, and was over- 
taken in the most ignominious flight ?* Pilate, who 
condemned Him, incurred no vengeance from Him.t 
He had only a handful of disciples, and they forsook 
Him and fled. During the whole course of His 
ministry he had only gained over to His doctrine ten 
fishermen and two publicans of the lowest sort. J Even 
these He had not succeeded in attaching truly to His 
cause. " Those who had been with Him during His 
life, who had listened to His voice, who had taken 
Him for their master, when they saw Him suffering 
and dying, were not willing to meet death or suffering 
with Him; on the contrary, they even denied that 
they were His disciples. "§ Briefly summing up the 
whole argument, Celsus exclaims through the mouth 
of his Jew : " Instead of the Divine Word, all purity, 
all holiness, the Christians set before us as the Son 
of God, a being worthy only of contempt, and who 
perished miserably on a cross. "|| 

It is plain that Celsus and his Jew were of that order 
of men, with whom present success is the gauge of 
truth. Even accepting his stand point, the resurrec- 
tion of Christ seriously admitted, would overturn the 
strongest objections urged against Christianity, since 

* "Contra Celsum," II. 9. + Ibid., II. 34. 

J AzKavavrag icai reXwvag tovq l^coXiardrovg fxovovg £i\e. (Ibid., II. 46.) 

§ ~K.o\aZ6/xevov kcli cnroQvi](TKOVTa bpojvreg ovre avvairkdavov, ovre 
VTCtpcnrkQctvov avrov. (Ibid., II. 45.) 

|| 'kirocdKVVjjLtv ov Xoyov naOapbv ko.1 liyiov, dXXa avOpanrov, aTijioTarov, 
CLTraxOsvTa kcii dirorvfnrapKrOtVTa. {Ibid., II. 3 I.) 



486 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

a crucifixion leading to such glory ceases to be a death 
of infamy. Therefore the Jew spares no pains to 
destroy the faith in this great fact, which is the basis 
of the apostolic preaching. He points out, in the first 
place, that Christ is not the only impostor who has 
ventured on this startling declaration, and has found 
many credulous followers. Pythagoras, Orpheus, Her- 
cules, Theseus, — all these have come back from the 
dead, if we may credit popular legends. Why should 
that which we treat as an absurd fable in the history 
of these mythical personages, become a solemn verity 
when predicated of Jesus Christ ? The sudden darkness, 
the earthquake, all the signs which in the Christian 
story accompanied His death — do they not clearly 
point to the legendary character of the narrative ? 
"What ! are we to suppose that He who could not save 
Himself in life, left the tomb a living man, and bearing 
the visible marks of death in His pierced hands ?* 
Again : who are the witnesses of this miracle ? A 
frenzied woman, men under the same spell of magic 
arts, who have dreamed the thing, or have imagined 
that what they desired had really happened, if indeed, 
which is more probable, they have not designedly sought 
by this falsehood to accredit their other impostures. t 
If the Christ had desired to give full proof of His 
divinity, He should have shown Himself after His 
resurrection to His enemies, to His judges, to all men, 
in fine. J Where is He now, that we may see and 
believe Him? For if it is not possible for us to believe, 
it must be allowed that He is come to drive us into 

* "On St) %ojv pkv ovk i7rr}pKi.aev eavro), veKpbg & avi<S7r\. (" Contra 
Celsum," II 55.1 

f Aid toiovtov xpsixj/xaTog d(popui)v dXkoig dyvpraig Trapaaxtiv. (Ibid.) 

% Ibid., II. 63. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 487 

unbelief, since He was not able to convince even His 
own disciples."* 

Celsus has skilfully manipulated the polemics of 
Judaism against Christianity ; he has drawn all the 
advantage possible from it, and yet this is but the 
prologue to his own polemics. At length he throws 
off his Jewish mask to make his home thrusts. First 
of all he turns upon his temporary ally, and before 
entering into direct conflict with Christianity, he 
attacks Judaism without mercy, ignoring the fact that 
he has just now been leaning on "it for support. He 
well knows that the two religions rest essentially upon 
the same foundation — upon faith in a personal God, 
a free Agent, and the Creator of the world. If he 
succeeds in subverting this basis, the Old and New 
Testaments will be involved in a common destruction. 
He cannot forget, moreover, that in spite of the declared 
hostility between their actual representatives, the two 
religions stand in close connection ; the latter traces 
itself back to the former, it appeals to the same sacred 
books, and its roots lay hold of the historic past of 
Judaism. It is at Christianity, therefore, that Celsus 
is still aiming even when he attacks Judaism ; this is 
the secret of his deadly animosity to the Jew's religion. 
" After all," he says, " the contest between the 
Christians and the Jews turns upon a mere bagatelle, 
upon the shadow of an ass, as runs the proverb. t Both 
are as one on all that *is essential, and are struck with 
the same madness. In fact, the sole difference to be 
discerned between them is, that the Christians hold 
that the Christ is already come, while the Jews are still 
looking for Him in the future. It is vain for the latter 
to pretend they are the people of God: their origin 

* "Contra Celsum," II. 77, ?S. f "Opov vkiclq [i&xv- (Ibid., III. 1.) 



488 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

is well known ; their ancestors were Egyptian rebels, 
expelled ignominiously from their country for attempt- 
ing to introduce novelties in religion. They were the 
Christians of their day; they displayed the same factious 
spirit.* Their great prophet and lawgiver, Moses, 
cannot bear comparison with the early legislators of 
Greece, such as Linus and Orpheus. His books, which 
they are not allowed to interpret allegorically, miserably 
degrade the Deity, by making him a being of human 
passions. t As to the other prophets, their oracles are 
not to be named beside those of the Pythoness, by 
which the movements of whole nations have been 
swayed and guided. J The Jews have not even been 
able to preserve intact the belief in one only God, for 
by a strange inconsistency, they associate with Him 
in their worship, heaven and the angels, though they 
refuse their homage to the shining lights, the moon and 
the stars, which form part of the heavens. § Where 
is their superiority over other nations ? Their God is not 
their own, for He is but the Greek Jupiter in a lower 
form. Their institutions are borrowed from other 
nations; circumcision they derived from Egypt. The 
smoking ruins of their holy city, and their dispersion 
among the nations, are not arguments calculated to 
prove them the people favoured of heaven. || If we seek 
a truly ancient and venerable nation that can boast 
of its remote origin and of its p#st history, we must 
carry our researches not into Judaea but into Chal- 
dea."^[ It is not true that Celsus completely con- 
founds Judaism with other religions; if it were so, he 
would not attack it with such virulence. That which 

* 'AfiforspoLQ alriov ysyoi'evai rrJQ KaivorojiiciQ to GTaoiaZuv Trpbq to 
koTvov. (" Contra Celsum," III. 5.) t Ibid., I. 17, 18. 

t Ibid., VIII. 3. § Ibid., V. 6. || Ibid., V. 41. IF Ibid., VI. 80. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 489 

so moves his hatred is the essential dogma of the Jew's 
religion — the principle of theism, and the doctrine that 
God is one, and creation a free act. 

"These wretched shepherds," he says, in a passage 
in which he explicitly recognises the original character 
of the religion of the Hebrews, — "these wretched shep- 
herds, in following their Moses, allowed themselves 
to be snared by mean artifices, worthy indeed of such 
a race — into a belief in one only God,* as if every part 
of the universe was not divine, and the whole, God."t 
The account of the creation especially moved the mirth 
of the philosopher; it boldly confuted his Platonic ideas 
as to the eternity of the world, and must be got rid of 
at any cost.J This is the grand point of difference 
between Celsus and Christianity; all the other objections 
are in his eyes secondary ; the great controversy is 
between pantheism and theism ; we shall find him 
therefore recurring perpetually to this train of ideas. 

From Judaism he passes to Christianity, and subjects 
it to a most close and searching inquisition. He 
neglects no argument that can be urged against it, 
availing himself equally of the coarsest calumnies 
of popular passion and of the most subtle dialectic 
methods. His plan of attack is very simple ; he first 
pours a torrent of scorn upon the persons of the 
Christians, and having thus raised a mist of prejudice, 
rendering a calm and impartial examination impossible, 
he then proceeds to inquire. into their doctrine. The 
opening of his direct attack upon the new religion is 
utterly dastardly and mean; he, at the outset, per- 
fidiously declares his adversaries to be rebels, and by 

* 'AypoiKoig d—draig ipvxayuyijOtvTtc, %va kvopiaav tlvai Qeov. ("Contra 
Celsum," I. 23.) 

f To jiiv o\ov dvai Oebv, to. fie fisprj avTOv [j.i] 6tia. (Ibid., V. 6 ) 

J Ibid., VI. 49, 52. 

32 



49° THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

thus placing them beyond the protection of the law, 
secures to himself the last word, since he knows well 
that their voices will be stifled in blood, however 
eloquent and conclusive may be their defence. One 
cannot but ask, was it then worth while to enter on 
the discussion at all ? This appeal of the philosopher 
to the proconsul casts discredit upon the whole of his 
argument, and enlists all generous minds on the side 
of his opponents. 

The Christians are represented by Celsus as dangerous 
innovators, who overturn social order by breaking the 
unity of the empire and weakening the monarchical 
principle, which is its glory and strength. " If all 
were to follow your example," he says, " the supreme 
head of the government would soon be forsaken . . . For 
striking a blow at this great principle, you deserve 
to be punished."* Continuing his course of denuncia- 
tion, Celsus gives the most untrue representation of 
the assemblies which the Christians were compelled 
to hold in secret ;t he compares their A gapes to the 
dangerous associations proscribed by the law, because 
they harboured seditious designs. " Rebellion," he 
says, "is their bond of union; they hope to inspire 
a cowardly fear, and thus to gain an advantage for 
themselves. "J The internal commotions of the empire, 
he declares, had become more frequent as the Christian 
sect had increased. Even supposing that its adherents 
are not movers of sedition, they are at least useless 
members of society, who neglect or refuse their proper 
duties. The philosopher ironically exhorts them to aid 
the prince, to share the burden of his labours for their 
country, to take up arms for him, to fight under his 

-/'Contra Celsum," VIII. 68. 

+ 'Q.Q (TvvOriKag icpvfidrjv irpog a\\))\ovg 7roiovn'tv(uv. (Ibid.) 

% Ibid., III. 14. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 491 

orders.* Of what use can the Christians be, he asks, 
to an empire, the most venerable traditions of which 
they have trampled under foot ? Have they not broken 
through all the customs of their nation ? Nay, more; 
they have renounced the most sacred practices; they 
have no temples, no sacrifices, no statues of the 
gods.t " That which has been officially instituted," 
says this freethinker, " ought to be maintained. It is 
not permissible to abrogate customs which have been 
observed in a country from all time. "J The Christians, 
furthermore, belong to no nation; they are of no country; 
no one knows whence they come. Their deity, be he 
who he may, has surely marked his displeasure with 
them, by the accumulation of their miseries. " This 
God, who, as you say, has promised to load His wor- 
shippers with benefits, how has He served you ?§ So 
far from making you possessors of the whole earth, He 
has not even left you one foot of ground, not even a hut 
to call your own, and if any of you are still found 
wandering up and down for a hiding-place, you are 
sought out and slain. You are the worthy disciples 
of a crucified master, yourselves devoted to a shameful 
death." J Elsewhere Celsus, who feels that after all 
a death courageously met does honour to the doctrine 
which inspires it, sets as a counterpoise to the endurance 
of the Christians, the condemnation and courageous 
end of Socrates. 5[ Deeply imbued with the proud 
esoterism of the ancient philosophy, which communi- 
cated its secrets only to some few favoured initiates, 
he compassionates a sect in which all ranks are 

* " Contra Celsum," VIII. 73. \ Ibid., VII. 62 ; VIII. 17. 

X TlapaXveiv ovx oaiov ilvai ra s£ aoxiJQ Kara, tottovq vtvopi<y^kva. 
(Ibid., V. 25.) 

§ 'Opart baa uHp'tXijaev iiceivovg re nal vj.iag. (Ibid., VIII. 69.) 

|| Ibid., III. 34. IT Ibid., 1.3. 



492 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

confounded, and which gathers its adherents from the 
vilest and lowest classes. The Christians are charlatans 
who, incapable of imposing on the wise and cultivated, 
collect the dregs of the people in the public places, and 
canvass for the support of the ignorant, of children, 
and of slaves.* They in all points resemble those 
vulgar tricksters who are silent in the presence of 
intelligent men, but work wonders before silly women ; 
these low impostors often lead young people to break 
away from the yoke of their learned instructors to come 
and listen to them in the gymnasium, or in the workshop 
of the shoemaker or the fuller, where they can be the 
sole speakers, because none is able to make any reply 
or objection. t Celsus subsequently makes a parody 
on the preaching of the apostles, and all unwittingly 
renders homage to their zeal and courage, for he 
exhibits them as braving all dangers, to spread abroad 
their faith in every place. He puts into their lips the 
following language: " I am God, or the Son of God, 
or the Holy Spirit. I come because the world is going 
to perish. And you too, O men, will perish because 

of your sins. But I would save you Blessed 

is he who honours me All others I devote to 

eternal fire They add to these magnificent 

promises things mysterious, fanatical, obscure, in which 
the wise man can find no meaning. Everything is 
made to subserve the wild visions of these stupid or 
designing men. "J We see how strange a medley 
Celsus makes of various Scripture expressions. 

He bitterly reproaches the new religion with showing 
a strange predilection for men of vicious lives. Its 

* "EvTa civ opojm fiiipaKia icai oiKorpij3tov o^Xo^, Kai avol}T(i)v avQpuiroJv 
ofiiXov. (" Contra Celsum," III. 50.) 

f "ltvai elg rr\v yvvaiKOJV~iTiv } 7] to cncvrttov, ij to Kvabuov TtdQovcnv. 
(Ibid., III. 55.) 1 Ibid., VII. 9. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 493 

Founder, in truth, openly avowed that He came not to 
call the righteous but sinners. " What is then this 
special prerogative of the wicked ?"* Such a taunt cast 
the infinite compassion of Christ in His teeth, and 
reproached the father of the prodigal son with his 
readiness to forgive. The man who thus fails even 
to conceive of the mercy of God, must be equally at 
a loss to comprehend humility in man. Thus Celsus 
says again: "Those who act as equitable judges will 
not permit the accused to fall at their feet with groans 
and tears, lest they, the judges, should be influenced 
in their decisions rather by pity than by equity. But 
the God of the Gospel prefers base adulation to truth. "t 
Such is the malignant construction put by Celsus upon 
the Christian virtues. 

After thus defaming the adherents of the new 
religion, he proceeds to analyse their doctrine. He 
brings against it, first, the charge of being variable and 
inconstant, and of having already split up into the 
differing creeds of numberless sects. "At the com- 
mencement," he says, " when the Christians were few 
in number, they were all of one mind. But when they 
grew into a numerous body, they at once separated 
into countless parties, each forming a faction of its own 
— a practice quite in conformity with their primitive 
tendency.! These all condemn one another, though 
still retaining the common name of Christians. "§ 

When he comes at length to the direct attack upon 
Christian doctrine, he makes his assault upon three 
points ; he ridicules the form assumed, he criticises 

* Ti£ ovv avrr] 1) -Civ anap-uXuiv Trpo-ifuiGig ; ("Contra Celsum, '111.64.) 
f 'O 6i.bs S' apa ov rrpbg dXijOttav, dXXa —pog KoXaKeiav ducd&i. (Ibid., 

IIL 6 3',) 

X 2-d(7sig Idiag ix SLV tKaeroi OsXovai. (Ibid., III. 10.) 

§ Ibid., III. 12. 



494 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the method followed, and finally endeavours to destroy 
the foundation on which the teaching rests. Such 
a man as Celsus was incapable of perceiving true 
greatness anywhere. He could as little appreciate the 
simplicity of the Gospel, as the sublimity of the truths 
it revealed. The new religion had abandoned the 
exclusive use of the noble languages of Greece and 
Rome; it spoke to barbarous peoples in their own 
rude tongues, in order to make itself understood. This 
condescension seemed to Celsus utterly mean and 
unworthy.* He spoke with contempt of the homely 
and humble language of the prophets and apostles. t 
As a worthy son of Greece, and an enthusiast for 
artistic beauty, the philosopher frequently returned to 
this point, and bitterly ridiculed the simple and trans- 
parent style of Scripture, which seemed to him so far 
below the requirements of a refined taste, but which was 
in truth so far above him as to be out of reach of his 
admiration. The idolatry of form had totally perverted 
his aesthetic feeling, and simple beauty, like truth, 
eluded his perception ; it is clear that the drapery 
and ornamentation of the subject in hand would alone 
engage his attention. Let us admit that, tried by such 
a test, the Gospel is but a barbarous book, but in 
return for such a concession, let us ask if the worst 
of all barbarism is not that which sacrifices substance 
to show, the thought to the mode of speech ? 

Celsus is no less severe on the method of exposition 
pursued by the Christians than he is on its defects of 
form. He complains that it lacks all the characteris- 
tics of philosophic teaching, and being the offspring 
of ignorance and superstition, remains faithful to its 

* " Contra Celsum," VIII. 37. 

t $r)<riv tlvai ISiujTiKovg \6yoi>£. (Ibid., III. 68.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 495 

origin. It exhibits none of that dialectic learning, 
which links propositions together, supports them by 
powerful arguments, and thus gradually carries reason- 
able conviction to the mind.* The Christians despise 
reason, which is our sole defence against error and 
grossest superstition, and which forbids our belief in 
fanciful apparitions, such as those of Mithra and 
Hercules. Many Christians will neither receive nor 
give proofs of that which they hold. Their ordinary 
language is: "Do not inquire, be satisfied to believe; 
faith will save thee. The wisdom of this life is evil, 
stupidity is good."t The closing words are evidently 
a travesty on Paul's declaration to the Corinthians.^ 
Celsus affirmed that the belief in the divinity of 
Christ rested on no solid evidence, but simply on a 
blind confidence, on a visionary assurance. § We shall 
see presently with what lofty eloquence and depth 
of Christian wisdom, Origen meets these objections. 
They would be likely, nevertheless, to produce a strong 
impression on the adherents of the ancient philosophy, 
whose peculiar vaunt was that transcendent dialectic 
skill, which they esteemed as the very patent of intel- 
lectual nobility. 

From analysing the method of Christian teaching, 
Celsus proceeds to the doctrine itself. He distinguishes 
in it two elements, the one containing incontestable 
truths, the other unmixed error and superstition. To 
the former he denies any claim whatever to originality. 
That which Christianity holds of truth, it holds in 
common with philosophy in general, or with the religions 



* " Contra Celsum," I. 2. 

f M/} t&TaZs dXka Trinrtvaov Kai i] tt'iotiq gov awaei ae. Kaicov 1) kv 
r<p f3i.qj crcxpia, ayaOuv c'ij fxdjpia. (Ibid., I. 9.) 

I See 1 Corinth, iii. 18, 19. § " Contra Celsum," III. 39. 



496 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which preceded it. This Celsus maintains, first with 
regard to morals, and endeavours to show that the 
Gospel is not entitled to the honour even of purifying 
and renovating these.* He asserts that the precept 
enjoining humility, which he has elsewhere decried, is 
borrowed from a passage in the laws of Plato, wrongly 
construed. t The severe condemnation of the love of 
riches ascribed to Jesus Christ, had been read centuries 
before His day in the writings of the same philosopher, 
who had declared that he who is distinguished for his 
wealth cannot be distinguished for his goodness. % 
Celsus quoted the noblest passages from the Dialogues 
of Plato, in order to establish against the Gospel the 
charge of plagiarism. Faith in immortality, and the 
hope of the blessed life, were both derived from the same 
source, but had become more material and less pure 
by contact with Christianity. § The ancient religions 
were also examined to demonstrate that Christianity 
had gathered its spoil on all hands. This demonstration 
was greatly facilitated by the fact that Celsus never 
drew any distinction between the doctrine of Christ 
and His apostles, and the heresies which marred and 
misrepresented it. Thus he took the Ophites as 
authentic exponents of the doctrine of Christ, and 
nothing could be easier than to show a striking analogy 
between the religion of Zoroaster and a sect like that 
of the Ophites, which had merely thrown a thin veil 
of Christian terminology over its genuine Parseeism.|| 
The adoration of Jesus Christ, Celsus regards as a 
mere reproduction of the apotheoses of ancient Greece, 
which had exalted all its heroes to the Olympic mount. 
The Christians, he says, will not admit that these men 

* 'Qg ov oifivov ti /ecu Kaivbv p&Brma. (" Contra Celsum," I. 4.) 
t Ibid., VI. 15. t Ibid., VI. 16. § Ibid., VII. 28, 30. 
I Aivi-~TSTCU TavTO. Kai 6 Hipauiv Xoyog. (Ibid., VI. 22, 24.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 497 

of renown have become gods, and yet they pretend that 
their Jesus appeared again to them after His death.* 
The fable of Satan reminds one of the war of the 
Titans, t with this difference, that Christianity grants 
to the adversary of the gods a long and signal triumph 
before his final defeat. J In short, the new religion 
resembles that of the Egyptians; without, are majestic 
porticoes, lofty pillars, brilliant luminaries, sacred 
ceremonials ; but enter the building, and you find only 
a vile beast, a monkey or a crocodile upon the altar. 
Even in Egypt, however, we have in Apis and Anubis, 
symbols of the heavenly powers, but here the basis of 
the doctrine is sheer folly. § 

If Celsus judges thus severely the dogmas which had 
some analogy with the philosophies or the religions 
of pagan antiquity, what may we not expect from him 
in regard to those which are exclusively peculiar to 
Christianity, and which are all more or less closely 
connected with the folly of the cross ? He looks upon 
Jesus Christ as nothing better than an impostor, followed 
by other deceivers equally worthless. How could he 
account otherwise for so many men accepting this tissue 
of absurdity— this nameless folly, which styles itself 
Christianity? Celsus concentrates his attacks upon the 
central dogma of Christianity — Redemption, and meets 
it by two objections, which seem to him decisive. He 
accuses it, on the one hand, of lowering the conception 
of God by a degrading anthropomorphism ; and, on 
the other hand, of exalting human nature beyond all 
reason, by encouraging the idea that for a worm of the 
earth like man, the Son of God should have left His 
glory, and come down to suffer and die. The whole 

* "Contra Celsum," III. 22. f Ibid., VL 42. 

X Ibid., VI. 12. § Ibid., III. 17. 



498 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

argument of the Greek philosopher turns on these two 
points, both of them subversive of the bases of theism. 
Celsus reproaches Christianity with degrading the 
idea of Deity, not only by the dogma of the incarnation, 
but by that of creation. He had already glanced at this 
point in his objections against Judaism ; but he recurs 
to it with much insistance in the second portion of his 
book. The narrative of Genesis, which represents the 
creative act as the work of several days, appears to him 
supremely absurd ; but that which is most of all repel- 
lent to him, is the idea of a free creation. From his 
point of view he was undoubtedly right. Deeply 
imbued with Platonic dualism, he could not admit that 
the Supreme Being, the first principle, the God absolute, 
should have had any contact with the world of matter. 
That theory of creation which referred to the Supreme 
God the origin of all life, physical as well as moral, 
came into direct collision with his philosophic preju- 
dices. Thus he attached great importance to the 
doctrine of demons, those intermediate divine powers, 
by which the Platonic system endeavoured to bridge 
over the gulf between the ideal God and the world, 
attributing to them the organisation of matter and the 
production of corporeal existences. A modified poly- 
theism thus furnished ancient philosophy with valuable 
safeguards for the supposed ideality of the Supreme 
Being. Faithful to these principles, Celsus combats at 
once the severe monotheism of Christianity and the 
Scripture doctrine of creation. He cannot recognise a 
God who, without any intervening agency, produces a 
world of material elements. He cannot conceive of God 
except as a purely ideal being, having communication 
with the lower sphere only through the medium of in- 
ferior deities or demons. Paganism appears to him sus- 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 499 

ceptible of a rational interpretation, thanks to this living 
chain of countless links, which, starting from the lowest 
existence, finally fastens itself around the throne of the 
Supreme God. On the other hand, he can find no 
means of arriving at an understanding of a religion like 
Christianity, which worships one God alone, and attri- 
butes to Him the creation of the entire world. Hence 
Celsus makes a determined opposition, not only to the 
Christian conception of creation, but also to that jealous 
monotheism which regards the demons as accursed 
beings, and transforms these inferior gods into powers 
of darkness to be resisted. " God," says Celsus, 
"according to Plato, has made nothing that is mortal; 
He has produced only the immortal ; mortal beings are 
the work of another creation. The soul is the work of 
God; the body comes from the hand of another creator; 
it differs in nothing from the worm and the frog; it is 
made of the same substance, and has within it the same 
principle of corruption."* These other creators, by 
whom matter is organised, are those very inferior gods 
or demons, whom the Christians erroneously consign to 
hell. Thus the worship of demons is closely connected 
with the fundamental principles of the doctrine of Celsus, 
and it is easily to be understood that he should defend 
it with much tenacity, for on the issue of this particular 
question, secondary in importance as it might at first 
sight appear, depends the issue of the conflict between 
monotheism and dualism. "Why," he asks, "should 
the worship of demons be forbidden us ?t Is not the 
superintendence of every matter committed to some 

* '0 fiev Qsbg ovSev Bvqrbv i-Koiriaiv, a\\a j.wva rd dOdvara, rd Qvrjrd 
dXXiov toTiv spyrt. |" Contra Celsum," VI. 54.) 

f Aid ri daifxovag ov Oepcnrevrkov. (Ibid., VII. 68. Comp. 
VIII. 2-1 1.) 



500 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

powerful administrator?" Celsus explicitly acknow- 
ledges that all nature is under the direction of demons ; 
in fact, he holds that if Christians intend to reject 
demoniacal influence and aid, they must renounce life 
itself. " The fruits they eat, the wine they drink, the 
water they draw, the air they breathe, — all these good 
things come to them from some demon.* If they will 
refuse their worship to those who preside over our 
existence, let them take no wife, let them have no 
children ; let them depart entirely out of life."t Celsus 
mentions approvingly the Egyptian fable which recog- 
nises some special demon or celestial being as watching 
over the health of each separate part of the body. J 
These examples enable us definitely to understand his 
point of view. If he defends polytheism, and combats 
the Scriptural theory of the creation, he does so as 
the champion of Platonic dualism, and with a view to 
maintain the eternal opposition between the material 
principle and the spiritual. § 

On the same grounds Celsus absolutely rejects the 
idea of moral evil and of the Fall. He is led to this 
result by the logic of his system. In truth, if there is 
no liberty, there is no responsibility, and consequently 
no possibility of guilt. Let it once be granted that 
evil results necessarily from the constitution of any 
creature, and it can no more be imputed to him. The 
argument may even be carried further, and we may say 
that a necessary evil is not truly an evil, — that it is so 
only relatively and in appearance, but that it forms an 
ultimate part of the harmony of the whole, of the 

* Ovicapa Trapa Tivwv Saij-iovior hKciara tovtujv Xapfiavovcri. ("Contra 
Celsum,'- VIII. 28.) f Ibid.. VIII. 35. J Ibid., VIII. 58. 

§ Baur has admirably elucidated Celsus' doctrine of the 
demons. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 50I 

general fitness and beauty. Platonism, in spite of 
some happy inconsistencies, in which we recognise the 
assertion of the indestructible moral instinct, led, in 
truth, to this metaphysical optimism, doubtfully at first, 
more distinctly in its later and lower developments. 
Spirituality and unity constitute the essential good ; 
it follows that all that is corporeal and individual is 
tainted with evil, and yet it is a necessity that corporeal 
and individual beings should exist. Hence the evil in 
them contributes to the general good. On this point 
the incompatibility was absolute between Christianity 
and ancient philosophy. This appears clearly in the 
declarations of Celsus. He says : " There neither has 
been in former times, nor is there now, nor ever shall 
be, an increase or diminution of evil. The nature of the 
universe is ever identical, and the production of evil is 
not a variable quantity."* This world, the work of God, 
is a perfect whole ; its parts exist not for themselves, but 
in connection with all the rest. Every creature remains 
in the rank in which it was placed. t Thus, evil has no 
reality ; it is absorbed in the universal harmony. The 
first deduction from such a premise is, that there can be 
no such thing as the Fall, or sin, and that God has no 
more reason to be angry with man than with a monkey, 
or any other such animal. J Matter, which is a neces- 
sary principle, is the sole source of evil.§ We must 
observe further, that that which seems to us evil is not 
so in reality. || We do not know that it is not a good 
for some other man, or for the totality of beings. The* 

* Mia 7/ Tu>v oXiov fyvaiQ kcii t) avrfj. (" Contra Celsum," IV. 62.) 
f"0 Ct Kocrjiiog cjg civ 9tov tpyov 6X6«:Xrjpov kcii rsXuov t£ cnrcivriov yivtrai. 
(Ibid., IV. 99.) " t Ibid. 

§ "YXy TrpoGKurai. (Ibid., IV. 66.) 
|j "On kcxv 001 ri dotcy kcikov, outtw cijXov el kcikov iariv. (Ibid., IV. JO.) 



502 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

other objections urged by Celsus against the Mosaic 
account of creation are of less moment. He accuses 
God of having produced or provoked the rebellion of 
man by the commandment given him, and he lays the 
fault of Adam to the charge t)f the Creator, on the 
pretext that it was foreseen ; for, according to his view, 
liberty cannot subsist unimpaired in presence of the 
Divine foreknowledge.* 

The same arguments which invalidate to the philoso- 
pher the records of the Creation and of the Fall, are 
also subversive of the theory of Redemption. In fact, 
if it is true that God is only an impalpable Idea, raised 
above the worlds ; if it is true that His greatness con- 
sists in His exemption from all contact with the lower 
sphere, the sublime drama of Redemption, as it is 
presented to us in the Gospel, is a mere profanation ; 
it is even impossible for a moment to conceive of it. 
God is good, beauty, blessedness; He contains in Him- 
self all that is most excellent. If He comes down to 
men, He must needs undergo a change ; that change 
cannot be other than a diminution of His beauty and 
blessedness ; it must be a degradation, consequently 
a transformation from good to evil. But this trans- 
formation is impossible, for only the perishable is sus- 
ceptible of change ; that which is immortal is, on the 
contrary, by its own nature, immutable. God, then, 
cannot be the subject of any change. t Celsus goes so 
far as to brand as scandalous the idea of the incarnation 
In any form.]: But supposing that such an event had 
been within the range of the possible, why should the 
idea of bringing men back to righteousness only have 

* "Contra Celsum," VI. 63. 

f Ouk civ ovv Tavrrjv T))v jxiTa^o\i)v Otbg dsxoiTO. (Ibid., IV. 34») 

% Ibid., IV. 2. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 503 

occurred to God after so many ages ? * Must we ac- 
cept the Christian notion that the contemplation of the 
Most High, being a thing difficult to finite natures, 
God brought His Spirit down to dwell in a body like 
ours, that we might grasp and possess it under this 
form ?t But why, in such a case, give to His Spirit so 
mean a dwelling-place ? Could He not have clothed 
Him in a celestial form which would have forbidden 
the possibility of doubt ?J If the Divine Spirit really 
animated the body of Christ, that body should have 
surpassed all other mortal forms in grandeur, beauty, 
strength, and majesty. It is, in truth, impossible that 
one who carries within him a divine element not 
possessed by others, should not be superior to them ; 
and yet this Christ differed in nothing from other men ; 
He was, it is said, small of stature, and His face had 
neither beauty nor nobleness. § If God, like the Jupiter 
of the drama, suddenly awaked from long slumber to 
save the race of man, why did He send His Spirit into 
a remote corner of the earth ? He might have diffused 
it through a multitude of bodies, and thus sent it 
throughout the whole world. Are we not struck with 
the humorousness of the notion, when we read, in a 
comic Greek poet, that Jupiter, just awaked from sleep, 
sent Mercury to the Athenians and Spartans? "Do 
you not give us yet greater cause for laughter, O you 
who declare that the Son of God has been sent to the 
Jews ? || It appears as if, in His sleep, God had for- 
gotten the orders He had previously given by Moses to 



* Mf-a Toaovrov alaiva. (" Contra Celsum," IV. 9.) 
f Ibid., VI. 69. % Ibid., VI. 73. 

§ 'AW aig <paoL fxiKpbv teal SvaaCiQ teal aytvvtg r\v. (Ibid., VI. 75-) 
|| Ov KaTayikcKJTOTepov 7Ti.7ronqKi.vai 'lovdaiotg 7Vi[i7xb\ii.vov tov Qiov rbv 
vwv. (Ibid., VI. 78.) 



504 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

His people ; for He had commanded them to enrich 
themselves by spoil, to pour out the blood of their 
enemies like water, sparing neither small nor great. 
And now, behold! this so-called Son of God proclaims 
a law precisely contrary. He preaches poverty and 
forgiveness of injuries. How can such a contradiction 
be explained ? Has God condemned His own legis- 
lation?"* Celsus concludes the whole of this dis- 
cussion of the incarnation by accusing the Christians 
of having fallen into abject materialism. They desire, 
in fact, to behold God with the bodily eye, instead of 
resting satisfied with the moral intuition commended 
by philosophy. "You are the most absurd of men," 
he says, " you who repudiate as idols other visible gods, 
in order to worship yourselves an image which is the 
most contemptible of idols. An idol, do I say ? Nay, 
a dead .man, whom you call the image of the Eternal 
Father!"? 

Celsus foresees that the Christians will point to the 
miracles of Christ. He proceeds, therefore, at once to 
reduce these to the lowest possible value. He does not 
deny them. He believes, like all his contemporaries, 
that hidden forces slumber in the deep heart of nature, 
and can be called forth by magic. He does not, there- 
fore, call in question the miraculous power of Jesus 
Christ and His apostles. "Be it so," he says; "we 
accept these facts as genuine." J But he places these 
miracles on a par with the sorceries of the magicians 
of Egypt. Did any one ever dream of regarding those 
men as the sons of God, who, for so many coins, 
wrought a thousand prodigies, cast out demons, called 

* "H tS)v idiwv vofitav /xtTeyvoj; (" Contra Celsum," VII. 18.) 
f To Se ok; dX)]9tuQ elSwXov dOXnJrepov,. kcli fxrjce e'tScoXov en, aXX' wq 
vtKpbv (y'tfiovreg, nai Trar'tpa opoiov avn[j %j]tovvtsq. (Ibid., VII. 36.) 

J Ibid., I. 68, II. 50. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 505 

up the souls of heroes, and healed the sick ? Celsus 
held that sorcery could exert its power through men 
who were the captives of matter ; but this was an ad- 
ditional reason for him to treat it with contempt, 
and he delighted in casting this reproach upon the 
Founder of Christianity. 

After charging the new religion with miserably de- 
grading the conception of God, Celsus proceeds to his 
next accusation against it, that of unreasonably exalting 
the human creature. Strange that this proud philo- 
sopher, who could not find sarcasms bitter enough to 
express his contempt for the humility enjoined in the 
Gospel, should take pleasure in depreciating man, in 
disputing his divine sonship, and tearing from his brow 
the crown which sin itself had not been able wholly 
to destroy. The proud Platonist, who would be indig- 
nant to be for a moment classed among the humble 
and ignorant worshippers of a crucified Lord, who 
would feel his dignity compromised by accepting the 
doctrine of the Fall, does not hesitate to inflict an in- 
delible brand upon humanity. Epithets of adequate 
scorn fail him for the miserable Galileans who gather 
round a cross as their standard ; yet, proud philosopher 
as he is, he, by his system, drags the whole race of 
man down into the deep mire, and places him beneath 
the brute. Thus does pride lead to the lowest place, 
while humility rises to the highest. The Gospel pre- 
serves respect for humanity, even while it condemns ; 
the philosophy of Celsus degrades while it exculpates. 
Nothing can ever confer higher honour on humanity 
than the doctrine that God has given Himself a ransom 
for it. There is as much meanness as pride in not 
accepting the infinite price of our salvation ; for those 
who vilify human nature do so only that they may 

33 



506 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dispense with the duty of repentance ; they vainly hope 
to rise more readily from a -lower level. 

The pretension of both Jews and Christians to a share 
in the most amazing favours of the Deity, appears to 
Celsus the climax of absurdity. He compares them 
to ants emerging from their ant-hill, to frogs making a 
chorus in their marshes, to worms holding conclave 
in a poisonous slough, and devouring one another 
while they contested, as it were, for the palm of sin. 
" It is to us alone," they say, "God reveals His pur- 
poses; for us He neglects the world, the heavens, and 
all that the earth contains. His care is solely for us; 
to us alone He sends His messengers unceasingly, 
and His one supreme concern is the manner in which 
we may be eternally united to Him."* These worms 
of the earth go so far in their audacity as to say :" " We 
are the beings most closely related to God ; He has 
made us entirely in His image. t All things are subject 
to us ; the earth, the water, the air, the stars — all have 
been created for us, and are bound to obey us. And 
since some of us are defiled by sin, God will come 
Himself, or will send His Son to destroy the wicked in 
everlasting fire, and to bring us into life eternal."^ 
" Such pretensions," adds Celsus, " would be more 
tolerable on the part of worms or frogs than on the part 
of Jews or Christians." 

It isnot so much on Jews and Christians, however, 
as on human nature itself, that he lavishes his scorn. 
That worm of the earth, which he will crush with iron 
heel into the very dust, rather than allow the possibility 

* Uavra koctjjiov Kai T>)v ovpdv.ov (popav a~o\nrojv, {jjiiv f-iovoig £/i7ro- 
Xirsvirai. (" Contra Celsum," IV. 23.) 

f Qc6q i<Trlv, elra fj.tr iKtivov ijfitlQ V7r' avTov yeyovoreg Ttavry b/iotoi 
0e£ (Ibid., IV. 23.) 

J 'Api&rai Qebg rj 7rkfx\pti tov v'iov. (Ibid., IV. 23.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 507 

that a god should have stooped from heaven to save him, 
is man. He finds an impious satisfaction in placing 
him on the lowest step of the scale of being; and with 
a view to this end, he traces a minute parallel between 
man and the lower animals, which is entirely to the 
advantage of the latter. They live at less cost to them- 
selves than man; they have no need to water with the 
sweat of their brow the aliments on which they feed. 
All nature is a larder laden with plenty for them.* We 
have no right to esteem ourselves better than the beasts 
because we hunt and devour them. They also hunt and 
devour us, without the trouble of training a pack of 
hounds or setting snares. t Do men point proudly to their 
civilisation — to the cities they build, the laws they make, 
the magistrates they appoint ? Celsus answers : " Look at 
the ants andthe bees. The best regulated city in the world 
cannot be compared with a hive. That little kingdom 
has its wars and its victories, and the dead bodies of the 
drones show how rigorously justice is executed. The 
ants have their regular interments, solemnly performed 
for their dead. J They have a sufficiency of reason, 
a common understanding, generally accepted truths, § 
and it is even possible that were our ear fine enough 
to catch the sound, we might hear them conversing 
together. Any observer of earth from the height of 
heaven, would not perceive wherein lay the difference 
between the ants and men."|| If it is urged that man is 
at least a religious animal, Celsus replies that the birds 
have as much religion. We are even bound to suppose 
that they are in closer communion with the gods, since 
we address ourselves to the birds in order to discover 

* " Contra Celsum," IV. 76. ^ f Ibid., IV. 78. { Ibid., IV. 84. 
§ Aoyov <?vfX7r\r]f,u)(7iQ tort Trap avrdlg kcli koivcu ivvoiai kclQoKikuv 

tivuv. (Ibid.) || Ibid., IV. 85. 



508 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the Divine will. Elephants might give man lessons in 
fidelity to engagements, and they merit the palm of piety.* 
The beasts are then not only wiser than man, they are 
also more precious in the sight of God.t From all this 
it results that the world was not made for man, but for 
lions, eagles, and dolphins. It is strange to see the 
representative of philosophy thus exalting instinct far 
above reason, and proudly rejecting the folly of the cross 
in the name of such humiliating wisdom. He was led 
to these ignoble conclusions by his pantheism, which 
completely removed the barrier between the material 
and moral world. Take away liberty, and man is the 
most miserable of creatures. 

This negation of freedom leads Celsus to declare the 
great moral transformation which Christianity claims 
to effect through the new birth, to be an impossibility. 
" It is evident," he says, " that since sin is a natural 
tendency developed by habit, neither punishment nor 
pardon can 'do away with it. J Such therefore as man 
is by nature, such he will remain. Weak and wretched 
now, he has no higher estate to expect in the future; 
the resurrection of the body is an absurd fable." " The 
Christians," he says again, " are mad enough to imagine 
that when their God shall have made the fire of His 
wrath burn like a furnace, and when the whole world 
shall be consumed, they alone shall be preserved, and 
not those only who shall be yet alive at the time, but 
those also who shall be already dead, and that these, 
clothed again in the same bodies, shall rise from the 
ground. This hope is a worthy consummation of their 

* " Contra Celsum," IV. 88. 

t Ov fxovov <ro(pu)Ttpa dvai ra aXoya ru>v ^wcov Trjg av9poj7ru>v (pvauog 
aXXa Kai 9to<pi\e<rrepa. (Ibid., IV. 99.) 

X ArjXov oTi rovg afxapravav TrstyvKorag rt Kai siQiffixevovg, ovdeig av 
ovSe KoXd^wv icavTy fiera^aXoi fir)riye tXeutv. (Ibid., III. 65.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 509 

abject life.* Can the soul of man desire to dwell for 
ever in a body that has seen corruption? How can 
a body turned to dust recover its primal elements? 
The Christians reply, according to their wont, that with 
God all things are possible, as if it were possible for God 
to do things vile or contrary to nature. I do not dispute 
that God can give to the soul eternal life ; but corpses 
are, to use the expression of Heraclitus, more vile than 
the clods of the earth. And shall eternal existence 
be ascribed to this polluted flesh? Such a thing, which 
is contrary to all reason, is neither in the will nor in the 
power of God."t We trace in these words the dominant 
idea of the Platonist. that unconquerable dualism which 
made impossible any reconciliation between him and 
a belief founded upon theism. 

Such was, in brief, this studied attack of Greek 
philosophy on the Gospel. Learning, skill, irony, 
calumny, all were invoked and did their utmost. In 
the book of Celsus, we have evidently the last and most 
concentrated effort of the pagan mind to stifle the new 
religion. It has been worth our while to pause and 
examine it, for the vigour and art displayed in the use 
of its weapons, the care taken to neglect no available re- 
source, the subtlety of argument, the close concatenation 
of proofs, the keenness of the polemics, — all prove how 
formidable an enemy Christianity had already shown 
itself to the pagan world. By the chafing rage of its op- 
ponents, we may measure the progress of its influence.]: 

* 'AtsxvCjq (TKioXijKojv r) 'fkirig. (" Contra Celsum," V. 14.) 
f "Zdpica dri alojviov a7ro<pi)vcu irapa \6yov, ovre j3ov\T}aerat 6 Qsog ovre 
£vvr}(j£Tai. (Ibid., V. 15) 

% We have drawn the plan of attack pursued by Celsus from the 
fragments scattered through Origen's great Apology. An attentive 
study of these fragments has enabled us to determine their connec- 
tion, and to arrange them on a general principle, which imparts to 
them a striking unity of character and purpose. 



510 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

(c.) Attacks of Philosophic Theosophy upon Christianity. 

Celsus represents the ancient philosophic tradition 
of Greece in his insolent disdain for all strange doctrine, 
and especially for that which had its origin in a land 
of barbarism. But he could not check the strong- 
mental current setting in in his day in a very different 
direction. No school of the past, and no ancient religious 
form, was adequate to satisfy men's minds, and the 
majority, who were not led by this consciousness of 
moral unrest to embrace Christianity, or to espouse 
the Epicurean philosophy, took refuge in that vague 
syncretism which mingled confusedly all ideas and all 
mysteries, and was not unwilling even to borrow more 
than one feature from Christianity. This tendency, 
which had caused the success of the mysteries of Mith- 
ras among the popular ranks, and which had given 
birth to Neo-Platonism, was to present in its turn an 
opposing face to the new religion. Seeking to meet 
the same needs, it could not endure so formidable 
a rivalry; it was unable, however, to assume an attitude 
of violent hostility. This was forbidden by the breadth 
of its eclectic principles, and if it was true to itself, 
it had no right to repudiate absolutely any form of 
religion. In the opposition offered by the representatives 
of this school to Christian ideas, we shall not find the 
bitterness of Celsus or the contemptuous irony of Lucian ; 
in its calmness and self-restraint it was perhaps even 
more fraught with danger, and it willingly left to other 
schools the task of drawing the practical consequences 
from its indirect attacks. A very curious book gives us 
an acquaintance with these timorous and uncandid 
polemics — the " History of Apollonius of Tyana, by 
Philostratus." We have already spoken of the hero 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 511 

of this philosophical romance, when tracing the general 
outline of the age in which he lived; but we then only 
touched upon the historical basis of the book, which 
a skilful rhetorician has elaborated into a brilliant fabric. 
These legendary embellishments of the facts will be all we 
have to notice now. The}' are indeed full of significance 
from another than a literary point of view. Philostratus 
is a controversialist disguised as a novelist; his aim 
is to exalt, in opposition to the Messiah of the Christians, 
the Messiah of the Pythagoreans — the wise man par 
excellence in the estimation of the writer and of his party. 
He designs to make the ideal evoked or realised by the 
Gospel pale before another and very different ideal, 
which he deems far more dazzling in the fantastic 
colours with which he decks it ; and that he may lose 
no advantage, he does not shrink from borrowing various 
accessories from the sacred narratives. In order to be 
satisfied that we are not indulging a mere groundless 
supposition, it will suffice to point out the circumstances 
under which this book was issued. Philostratus was 
living near to the Empress Julia Domna, the wife 
of Septimus Severus, a lady tinctured with the philo- 
sophic eclecticism which was a few years later to be 
so brilliantly developed in her own family at the court 
of Alexander Severus. That the triumph of this school 
might be assured, it was needful at any price to supplant 
Christianity, or at least to involve it, in spite of itself, 
in the religious revolution to be inaugurated by the 
eclectic school. The extraordinary ascendancy gained 
by the new religion was due in great part to the cha- 
racter of its Founder, to the sublime incarnation of its 
doctrine in the person of Jesus Christ. There could 
be no surer method of nullifying its influence than 
an attempt to produce some similar effect on the side 



512 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the rival school. Let that school, too, show an 
embodiment of its principles in some illustrious master. 
No man could so well meet the requirements of this 
daring design as the famous magician, Apollonius of 
Tyana, whose person had already assumed gigantic pro- 
portions in the popular imagination, thanks to the halo 
of legends which had gathered around him. Might not 
he satisfy all the restless instincts of the age by his 
life of adventure, passed in traversing the world in 
quest of new beliefs, by the prodigies which sprang 
up everywhere beneath his feet, and by his hatred of 
tyranny? Such a man might well form an ideal type 
for his school, and a few tender traits might with 
advantage be caught from the hated stories of the 
Gospel, and added to this new figure. Philostratus 
hoped thus to unite in the person of a single man, 
who should be at once prophet and philosopher, the 
noblest attributes of philosophy and religion, and to 
satisfy alike the ignorant masses and the cultivated 
few. The life of Apollonius of Tyana was evidently 
composed with this intention. We feel that the 
author's whole endeavour is to represent the famous 
magician as the perfect man, in whom all the aspira- 
tions of the ancient world found their response.* 

The characteristics borrowed from the Gospels are 
many in the book of Philostratus, and are easily recog- 
nisable, in spite of the redundant ornamentation with 
which they are overlaid. Miraculous signs announce 
the appearance of Apollonius in the world ; his mother 
receives divine intimations of the event in dreams ; 

* Neander denies (wrongly, in our opinion,) this polemical inten- 
tion. (" Kirchen Geschichte," I. 179.) [Eng. Trans. Bonn's Ed., 
I. 42.] Baur, with his accustomed penetration, makes it very evident, 
although he exaggerates the conciliatory tendency of the book of 
Philostratus. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 513 

Heaven itself intervenes ; a lightning-flash cleaves the 
sea, and rises again into the upper air — the brilliant 
symbol of the high destiny of the great man.* He 
writes no books. This is not his mission, as it was not 
the mission of Christ. His language is not pompous, 
subtle, nor vulgar, but marked by a stern simplicity. f 
He skilfully draws the highest teachings from the sim- 
plest occasions, and constantly uses parables taken from 
field life. J His words are compared to a living spring 
at which thirsty spirits drink ;§ a few humble disciples 
follow him from place to place, and he devotes himself 
to them with the most complete abnegation of self. His 
discernment of the thoughts and dispositions of his 
interlocutors is admirable ; he reads their very hearts, 
and the life of those who come to him is revealed to him 
by a mysterious intuition. || The love which he inspires 
in his disciples is not, however, strong enough to keep 
them by his side in the hour of danger ; the greater 
part forsake him on the eve of his trial. One makes 
sickness a pretext for his desertion ; another, the want 
of money ; a third wishes to see his home once again ; 
a fourth has had terrible dreams ; and of his twenty- 
four disciples, eight only continue faithful to him as far 
as to Rome.lf Throughout the whole course of his life, 
Apollonius goes from place to place, doing good, and 
crowds everywhere follow his footsteps. He makes 
known purifications by which the guilty may be cleansed, 
and sends them away with the pardon of the gods.** 
" When he came to Ephesus, working-men forsook their 
occupations and followed him, some because they ad- 

* Philo stratus, " Life of Apollonius of Tyana," I. v. f Ibid., I. xvii. 

I Ibid., I. iii; IV. iv. (See the parable of the Sparrows.) 
§ Ibid., IV. xxiv. || Ibid., VI. ii. 

II Ibid., IV.xxxvii. ** Ibid., VI. v. 



514 THE EARLY YEARS' OF CHRISTIANITY. 

mired his wisdom, others, his countenance, his manner 
of life, his habits, or all these things together. . . . 
Man)/ sick persons, seeking for health, went to him, led 
by a divine inspiration."* He delivers his simple dis- 
courses, sometimes on the steps of a temple, sometimes 
on the hills or in the fields. He is very severe on sen- 
suality and pride, and preaches to the common people 
the love of wisdom ;t his miracles carry his fame far 
and wide. 

There is a transparent imitation of the Gospel in all 
this general outline of the life of Apollonius. It is still 
more marked in some special details of the narrative. 
Apollonius arrives at the court of the King of Babylon, 
and there at once obtains great credit. An officer of the 
palace is taken in a flagrant act of adultery in the harem. 
When asked what punishment is to be inflicted on the 
guilty pair, Apollonius grants them pardon. £ At Rhodes 
he meets a young man who lived only for selfish ease 
and pleasure. The magician reproves him sternly for 
his love of riches. § At Athens he cures a young de- 
moniac, commanding, with authority, the evil spirit to 
come out of his victim. The demon only obeys after 
having obtained permission to pass into a neighbouring 
statue. A young girl, of the family of the consul at 
Rome, had all the appearance of death ; her parents 
were already mourning her decease. " I will dry 
your tears," said Apollonius, and having touched the 
maiden and pronounced a few words over her, he 
restores her alive to her family. The magician refuses 
any recompense, saying that it was impossible to 
know whether life was really extinct or not in the form 
he had restored. This story is at once a parody and a 

* Philostratus, IV. i. t Ibid., IV. ii. 

% Ibid., I. xxxvi. Compare John xii. § Ibid., V. xxiii. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 515 

criticism upon the miracle performed by Christ in the 
house of Jairus.* 

When a prisoner, and on the eve of death, Apollonius 
tells his familiar disciples that he will- appear to them 
at a time when they believe him to be dead ; and, in 
truth, when they are afterwards assembled in deep 
distress, their master suddenly stands in their midst. 
To remove any apprehension that they are beholding 
only a phantom, he commands them to touch his body 
with their hands, and, like Thomas, they are thus con- 
vinced of the reality of his return. t Apollonius has also 
his ascension-day : in a temple of Crete 'he disappears 
from before the eyes of men, and a chorus of young girls' 
voices is heard welcoming him and singing this song : 
"Quit earth and rise, to the highest heaven rise !"J 
Yet more ; he has several times since reappeared to 
men to confirm his doctrine. 

The analogies between this life of Apollonius and the 
life of Christ, are very palpable. The book of Philos- 
tratus initiates us into the tactics of the defenders of 
paganism ; they sought to strike a blow at Christianity 
with its own weapons, and to supplant, by imitating it. 
But here also, as in the mysteries of Mithras, the 
resemblance is simply superficial ; the real dissonances 
are deep and radical. Apollonius remains still the 
Christ of pantheistic eclecticism, and of oriental gnos- 
ticism, the vague personification of its wandering and 
fitful dreams. He realises the fond ideal of that 
school — the fusion of all existing systems. He never ap- 
pears for a moment as the bearer of a sovereign message 
from heaven, of a new revelation, which abases all the 
religions and philosophies of the past, by proclaiming 
them impotent or insufficient. No ; the past preserves 
* Philostratus, IV. xlv. t Ibid., VIII. xii. J Ibid., VIII. xxxi. 



5l6 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

all its claims, since, judging by the life of the great 
travelling theosophist, the truth lies enclosed or con- 
cealed in the ancient creeds and schools. All that 
Apollonius does is to part the veil which hides it from 
vulgar eyes, and thus pagan antiquity is saved the 
painful humiliation which Christianity brought upon 
it by the proclamation of a strange God. It is ad- 
mitted that no religion or school contains the whole 
treasure of thought and faith necessary to mankind ; 
the precious fragments are scattered as it were through 
the whole world, and must be gathered up one by one. 
For this purpose, Apollonius traverses so many lands ; 
but the treasure is, nevertheless, to be found upon the 
earth, and man is not compelled to receive it as a free 
gift from Heaven. Philostratus repeatedly insists on 
the veneration felt by his hero for all the gods. When 
he arrived in any town, his first visit was to the temple ; 
he delighted in interrogating the priests. As soon as he 
began to teach in the sanctuaries, the gods became the 
objects of greater reverence, and men pressed into the 
holy places as if they hoped to receive the most generous 
gifts from the divinity.* Apollonius took pleasure in all 
holy places ; he went assiduously from one to the other, 
and said; Not one god repels me If He carried his 
veneration for the divinities of every order to such a 
length, that he severely blamed Hippolytus for with- 
holding his homage from Aphrodite. :]; He thus placed 
himself at the head of the pagan reaction, but it was 
with a view to purify and expand paganism. He seemed 
to serve the cause of progress by abjuring the narrow 
exclusiveness which had so long prevented the com- 
mingling of nations and of ideas. " Greece," he said, 
" is everywhere to a wise man. He looks upon no 
* Philostratus, IV. xli. f Ibid,, V. xl. t Ibid., VI. iii. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 517 

country as barbarous which is governed by the laws 
of virtue."* Faithful to these principles, Apollonius 
travels over the world, and slights no source of informa- 
tion. Following the bent of the age in which he 
lived, he held in highest estimation the wisdom of the 
East, and, to acquire this, he undertook long and 
perilous journeys. He sought the countries which had 
the most potent charms for the imagination of his con- 
temporaries. After visiting all the temples of Greece, 
and being initiated into all the mysteries, he fixed his 
abode for a time at Babylon, there to hold intercourse 
with the magi.f On the banks of the Nile he listened 
to the austere representatives of the most ancient order 
of priesthood ;J he never stayed in his travels till he 
had conversed with the Brahmins beneath the sacred 
forests of India, and had been initiated into their doctrine 
of boundless asceticism. " You have opened to me' the 
gates of heaven by your wisdom ! " he wrote to them 
subsequently. § 

Philostratus is careful to place the picture of these 
distant travels of the sage in highly poetical colours on 
the canvas. Apollonius finds on the Caucasus the 
fetters which bound Prometheus. In Egypt he sees 
the famous statue of Memnon, and India is to him a 
land of marvels, where strange animals, almost divine, 
tread the shores of mighty rivers beneath a dome of 
giant trees. The popular imagination thus found every- 
thing to flatter and delight it in the motley gospel of 
Philostratus. Apollonius speaks to Nature as its lord, 
and is always obeyed ; he penetrates the mystery of its 
hidden forces, and controls them at his will. In vain 
does Philostratus attempt to distinguish him from the 

* Philostratus, I. xxxv. t Ibid., I. xxv. 

I Ibid., VII. i. § Ibid., III. v. 



5l8 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

vulgar charlatans, the fraudulent sorcerers, whose 
name at this time was legion. After all his endeavours, 
his hero remains simply a magician still.* It was 
indeed trouble taken for naught, to attempt to pre- 
sent him in any other character to a generation eager 
after the marvellous and devoted to the arts of magic. 
Apollonius also gratified by his austerity the predilec- 
tions of an age which, under the influence of oriental 
doctrines, was marked by enthusiasm for the ascetic ; 
and he inspired admiration even in those who would 
not have been willing to bind themselves to so rigid a 
course of self-mortification. Full of a lofty scorn for 
all earthly treasures, the sage rejected with disdain the 
gold and diamonds which admiring kings laid at his 
feet.t As a true disciple of Pythagoras, he abstained 
entirely from the flesh of animals,! and renounced all 
the gentle solace of domestic life. He walked barefoot, 
roughly clad, possessing nothing that he could call his 
own, carrying his traveller's staff in his hand — the 
stern pilgrim of philosophy. " I am bound to go," he 
said, " wherever wisdom and the god within prompt 
me."§ Philostratus has recourse to a sure method of 
enhancing yet more the glory and influence of his hero, 
by making him a sort of tribune philosopher, who openly 
resists tyrants, and boldly suffers for liberty. He speaks 
of him as the tutor of Vespasian, who is supposed to 
have learned from his counsels, how to govern the world 
with justice. " The art of governing," said Apollonius 
to the future emperor, "is the highest upon earth, but 
it cannot be taught. I will tell thee, however, that 
which thou mayst observe with profit. Look not 
upon that revenue as true riches which comes from 

* Philostratus, VIII. ii. t Ibid., II. xl. 

I Ibid., II. vii. § Ibid., I. xviii. 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 519 

men groaning under taxation, for that is false and 
blackened gold which is wrung from tears. Keep 
within just bounds the liberty thou hast to do all thy 
pleasure, and thou shalt use it well. Let the law, O 
prince, reign over thee!"* In the presence of such 
tyrants as Nero and Domitian, Apollonius shows him- 
self indomitable : he resists them to their face. When 
brought before the bar of Domitian, he pays so little 
regard to the Roman Caesar, that he does not even 
glance at him, and when the accuser bids him look on 
the god of all men, he lifts his eyes to heaven. t For- 
getful of himself, he is much more anxious to defend 
the cause of truth than to save his own life. " O 
emperor!" he exclaims, "stay thy cruelties and the 
shedding of blood. Do to philosophy what thou will, 
for it is invulnerable ; but cease to make men weep, for 
at this very hour a terrible lamentation rises from sea 
and shore, to condemn the tongue of thy sycophants, 
who cause thee to be hated of the world. "J 

After his miraculous deliverance, Apollonius, at 
Ephesus, announced to his disciples the death of 
Domitian at the very hour in which the tyrant fell.§ 
Apollonius thus appears not only as a philosophic 
messiah, an ascetic, a great magician ; he enacts also 
the part of a political messiah, and thus appeals to the 
passions of the people no less than to their imagination 
and religious aspirations. 

In substance, his doctrine contains nothing that is 
original. He expresses the current ideas out of which 
sprang his Platonism ; he simply casts over them a veil 
of spirituality, borrowed from the religion of Christ. 
Dualism and metempsychosis lie at the basis of his 

* Philostratus, V. xxxvi. t Ibid., VIII. iv. 

I Ibid., VIII. vii. § Ibid., VIII. xxv. 



520 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

teaching, and on a convenient principle of allegorism, 
he sanctions all superstitions and worships all gods. 
His discourses bear the impress of the mystical Pla- 
tonism of his age ; he recognises the long chain of 
intermediary divinities which act upon Nature. He 
preaches austerity extending to asceticism, rebukes 
avarice, and attaches much importance to the inner 
life. We discern the influence of the new religion 
when we find him protesting against a devotion which 
is external only, and which pretends to supply the lack 
of piety and holiness by costly offerings and ostenta- 
tious sacrifices. " The superb gifts of the guilty," he 
says, "ought to be regarded, not as an offering to the 
gods, but as the ransom for crimes committed." The 
discourses put into his lips by Philostratus are, with 
a few striking exceptions, long and tedious, subtle and 
cold. There is no palpitating life beneath those 
pompous words ; and but for the miracles ascribed to 
him, Apollonius would have remained in the deepest 
obscurity, for he had not the power of clothing his 
thoughts in language which could give them new life. 

Thus the attempt of Philostratus to set up the 
famous magician as the rival of Jesus Christ, was 
doomed to ignominious failure ; it remains on record 
as nothing better than a parody of a sublime original. 

The same school of thought may have very diverse 
exponents. While the eclecticism of the day found 
elevated expression in the writings of Philostratus, it 
was associated in the romance of Apuleius with all 
that was degrading and vile. It is not strange that the 
few words devoted to Christianity by this writer should 
contain a gross insult. Describing one of the heroines 
of low degree, who are the favourite themes of his im- 
pure muse, he gives it to be understood that she was a 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK OX CHRISTIANITY. 52I 

Christian, and he ridicules and slanders the new re- 
ligion in the person of this woman, whose vicious life 
has reduced her to the lowest stage of moral vileness. 
"She was," he says, "malicious, cruel, unchaste, as 
greedy over her shameful gains as prodigal in her foul 
expenditure, — a stranger to all good faith, the avowed 
enemy to all virtue and modesty. She despised and 
trampled upon the holy gods ; then, in the guise of 
religion, she feigned the false worship of one god, whom 
she declared to be God alone — an idle farce, by which 
she deceived the world." * 

Neo-Platonism occupied the forefront of the pagan 
reaction. It might be foreseen that it, in its turn, 
would assail Christianity, for it was well aware that 
this religion of the poor and lowly was its victorious 
rival in the empire of the world. A man, who seemed 
admirably adapted to be an apostle of the Christian 
faith, was the vehement organ of this opposition. 
Porphyry, in spite of the elevation of his mind and 
that profound melancholy which never forsook him, 
remained an ardent adherent of paganism. He vainly 
imagined that he could renew its life by infusing into it 
the transcendent mysticism of his system. He was 
secretly conscious, nevertheless, that the ancient beliefs 
of polytheism melted away in his philosophic crucible ; 
still he clung all the more tenaciously to the forms and 
rites of the religion of his fathers, and every innovation 
in religious usage excited his lively indignation. He 
wrote to his wife: "One must honour the gods according 
to the customs of one's country." t His book " On the 

* " Tunc spretis atque calcatis divinis numinibus, in vicem 
certae religionis, mentita sacrilega praesumptione dei, quern 
predicaret unicum." (Apuleius, " Metamorph.,*' IX. Panckoucke 
Edit., II. 195. 1 

t li^v to Quov Kara ra Trarpia. (" Epist. ad Marcell.") 

34 



522 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Oracles" contains a large number of so-called oracles, 
all directed against the Christian doctrine. There we 
find the following passage: "A man came to consult 
Apollo as to the best means of bringing back his wife 
to the worship of the national gods. The reply was, 
that it would be easier to write on running water, or to 
fly through the air, than to prevent a deluded woman 
from worshipping her dead god."* Elsewhere Por- 
phyry quotes an oracle opposing the divinity of Christ, 
though at the same time rendering homage to His 
character. " The soul of the pious man," it is there 
said, "after the body has undergone certain sufferings, 
rises to the fields of heaven." Porphyry adds, in the 
form of a commentary, that Christ is not to be blamed, 
but those who will make a god of Him. Not con- 
tent with these indirect attacks, the Neo-Platonist 
philosopher composed an important work against 
Christianity. Its title resembles that given by Celsus 
to his book, but its spirit is much more serious. His 
discourses against Christianity were divided into fifteen 
books. t Of these we possess only fragmentary por- 
tions ; but in the judgment of his contemporaries this 
book breathed out bitter hatred against the Gospel. 
Theodoret regarded Porphyry as the most implacable 
enemy the Christians had. J It is not possible to 
determine what was the plan of his work. If we may 
judge from the quotations made by the Fathers, it was 
less philosophical than that of Celsus. Porphyry's 
principal objections took, the form of three queries: 
" i. Why was the mission of Jesus Christ to the world 
so long delayed ; and what became of men in the ages 

* St. Augustine, "De Civit. Dei," XVI. 23. 

f Aoyog (pi\a\t]9)]g trpbg rovg xp^'tavoi/c. 

X 'O 7rdpT<Dv })[iiv f'x&orog. (" Gr. Affect.," 10, 12.) 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 523 

preceding it?* 2. On what grounds do Christians 
reject the sacrifices, if it is true that they were ap- 
pointed by the God of the Old Testament ? 3. What 
relation finally is there between eternal punishment 
and our sins ? Has not Jesus declared that, with the 
measure we mete to others, it shall be measured to 
us again ?" t 

Porphyry's great aim was to destroy the credibility 
of Scripture, and he subjected the sacred text to a 
minute examination. He passed in review the books 
of Moses, and refused to Christians the right of having 
recourse to an allegorical exegesis in order to evade 
the difficulties of the text. The book of Daniel espe- 
cially was the subject of his animadversions; he denied 
its genuineness, and asserted that the prophecies 
contained in it had been devised after the events, under 
the reign of Antiochus.t He maintained that the style 
of Daniel indicates a Greek original translated into 
Hebrew. § The New Testament was also subjected to 
the test of his skilful but ill-affected criticism. Some- 
times he took exception to the miraculous element ;|| 
sometimes he charged Christ with self-contradiction, 
as, for example, in the fourth of John, where, after 
telling His brethren that He would not go up to Jeru- 
salem, If He did repair, as we are told, to the Feast of 
Tabernacles. But he laid most stress on the dispute 
which took place at Antioch between St. Peter and St. 
Paul. He reproached the former with falling into a gross 

* " Quid egerunt tot sasculorum homines ante Christum." 
(Augustine, " Epist.," cii.) 

f Augustine, "Epist.," c. ; Hieronymus, "Epist," cxxxiii. ; "Ad 
Ctesiph.," xix. J Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xix. 

§ Hieronymus, " Procemium in Daniel." 

|| Ibid., " Liber quaest. hebraic. in Genes." 

IT Ibid., " Epist. ad Pommach." 



524 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

error; the latter with giving way to anger; and this 
dissentience between the two leaders of the primitive 
Church seemed to him to shake the very foundations 
of the Christian doctrine.* We note in Porphyry the 
dawning tendency to exalt the teaching of the Master, 
to the detriment of the interpretation given by His 
disciples, — a method very effectual in disposing of the 
Gospel, which has come down to us only through the 
apostles. t 

The "Life of Pythagoras," by Jamblichus, resembles 
in many respects the " Life of Apollonius of Tyana," 
by Philostratus ; it is not, however, at all so palpably 
an imitation of the evangelical narrative. On this 
account, Hierocles, the last of the pagan authors of this 
era who wrote against Christianity, made use of the 
work of Philostratus rather than that of Jamblichus, 
to sustain his comparison of the miracles of Christ with 
the arts of the necromancers. He says: "You hold 
Jesus Christ to be God because He restored sight to 
some blind persons, and wrought other prodigies of a 
similar kind; and yet the Greeks do not regard Apollo- 
nius, the great miracle-worker, as a god, but only as a 
man favoured by the gods." Hierocles boldly assailed 
the moral character of Jesus Christ, and repeated the 
vile calumnies of Celsus.J We know that this contro- 
versialist was at the same time a cruel proconsul ; 
he governed the province of Bithynia, and thus had it 

* " Volens et illi maculam erroris, et huic procacitatis, et in 
commune ficti dogmatis accusare mendacium dum inter se ecclesi- 
arum principes discrepent. " (Hieronymus, " Procemium in Gal. 
Epist./' lxxxix., ad Augustinum.) 

f On the polemics of Porphyry against Christianity, see Hol- 
stenius, "Dissertatio de vita et scriptis Porphyri." Baur, work 
quoted, p. 408. A thesis by M. Rognor, Montauban, 1847. 

I Lactantius, " De Morte Persecutor./' v. 2. Eusebius, " Advers. 
Hierocl." 



BOOK III. — THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 525 

in his power to make victims of opponents whom he 
failed to convince. This is the weak and unfair side of 
all the polemics of paganism against Christianity. The 
pen of the writer is too readily exchanged for the sword 
of the executioner. Pascal truly says, if we are pre- 
disposed to believe a history the witnesses of which lay 
down their lives in its confirmation, we are on the 
same principle predisposed to despise a doctrine, the 
advocates of which put their opponents to death. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE DEFENCE OR APOLOGY OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 

§ I. Preliminary Reflections, 
(a.) Three Schools of Apologists. 

We have seen how Christianity, subjected to the 
assaults of brute force and of science, of the sword 
and of the pen, replied to the former by the heroic 
firmness of its adherents, who, laying down their 
lives in its defence, guaranteed its enduring vitality. 
We have yet to note its response to the onslaught 
of the proud wisdom of the ancient world, to that 
haughty challenge of pagan philosophers to which 
we have just listened. Christianity has too much 
respect for the human mind to be contented with a 
victory achieved only in the outer life, and it is well 
prepared to satisfy reason, while still holding it in sub- 
jection to a higher power. The defender of the Christian 
faith is untrue to his mission if he evades a fair dis- 
cussion, and appeals instead to any external authority 
whatever. His work is to establish the divine revelation 
upon solid evidence, not to cling to it with a blind 
tenacity which shrinks from full and candid examination 
of its tenets. He is bound to take his stand on ground 
common to all, and to repudiate any peculiar privilege or 
exemption as a confession of weakness, and equivalent 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 527 

to a pre-acknowledgment of defeat. The power of the 
apologist may be measured by his fearlessness. It 
is not then surprising that the age which gave birth 
to the martyrs, should have produced also the greatest 
apologists. These true philosophers made no evasions, 
used no pious subterfuges to excuse themselves from 
replying seriously to their adversaries ; they did not 
seek an unworthy covert from dangerous discussion, 
in the divine simplicity of the Gospel, or in the folly 
of the cross. They did not make their sufferings 
a shield against all attacks, nor did they consider that 
the honourable wounds of the persecuted Church were 
an adequate refutation of her assailants. The repre- 
sentatives of the new religion did not allow a single 
accusation, a single objection to fall to the ground ; 
they overcame pagan philosophy with its own weapons. 
The intellectual superiority of Christianity is no less 
marked than the higher tone of its morals. It would 
have been strange had it been otherwise ; the bonds 
which bind together man's moral and intellectual facul- 
ties are of such a kind, that that which ennobles and 
purifies the soul must ultimately expand and raise the 
intellect. Though Christianity had for its first witnesses 
fishermen from the Lake of Galilee, it was nevertheless 
itself the grandest of all philosophies ; and as soon 
as the Church had leisure, to add to its faith the 
advantages of high culture, as soon as it found itself 
constrained by the tactics of its assailants to plead its 
cause before the bar of science, its defenders took their 
place at the head of the intellectual movement of their 
day. It is a capital error to suppose that to renounce 
the vain pride of reason is to renounce intellectual 
superiority; the apology of the Fathers gives striking 
evidence to the contrary. 



528 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

We draw a line of distinction, among the writings 
devoted to the defence of Christianity, between those 
which may be regarded as petitions to the emperors, 
simply pleading the cause of the Christians against 
injustice, and those which present a full and argumen- 
tative apology of Gospel truth. We have before us now 
only the latter branch of the defence of the new religion. 
In examining it we shall be guided less by order of time 
than of thought ; and we shall divide the apologists into 
three classes, ranged rather according to the spirit and 
purpose, than the date of their works. The chrono- 
logical and philosophical order, however, very generally 
coincide. We distinguish three principal schools of 
apologists, each . of which is characterised by the 
solution it offers of the great question of the natural 
relations between humanity and Christianity. This 
is clearly the essential problem for the apologist, since 
his first mission is to establish a link between truth 
and the human soul. The method pursued and the 
arguments used, will vary according to the idea enter- 
tained by the apologist of the existing relations between 
man and revelation. 

We shall find in the Church of the early ages, 
as indeed throughout all eras of the history of Chris- 
tianity, three different solutions of this vital question. 
We have first, two schools radically opposed to each 
other; the one recognising a deep affinity between 
Christianity and the human conscience, the other reject- 
ing this consoling doctrine, and affirming that every, 
spark of the divine in the soul of man was quenched 
at the Fall. The former apologists are of course anxious 
to show the sympathy with Christ latent in the human 
heart ; they appeal to the aspirations of the soul and 
conscience, while they nevertheless clearly avow that 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 529 

the best desires can no more supersede revelation than 
hunger can take the place of the bread needed to satisfy 
it. The apologists of the second school seek to crush 
human nature down to the very dust under its burden 
of ignominy, to bruise and break and trample out its very 
life, that it may be driven by its utter wretchedness and 
despair to the Divine Redeemer. The school which 
recognises a true affinity between the soul and truth 
is divided into two branches : the one seeks for proofs 
and witnesses of this affinity in the historical develop- 
ment of mankind, and traces striking manifestations 
of it in the religions and philosophies of antiquity ; the 
other includes all the past in one broad anathema, 
reviles alike philosophers and gods, and acknowledges 
no influence apart from Christianity but the natural 
instincts of the human heart. 

We shall commence our exposition of the various 
apologies of primitive Christianity with the school which 
pleaded its cause with the greatest breadth of thought. 
Both antiquity and truth are on its side, and its writings 
are subscribed by the most illustrious names of the 
Eastern Church. The second school is headed by 
Tertullian, the Christian tribune. Arnobius introduces 
the third by heaping insults on human nature, which 
he vilifies with every possible epithet of opprobrium. 
We shall inquire what is the plan of attack and defence 
pursued by each school, what is the method of each, 
and what the use made of the various kinds of proofs, 
both external and internal. Substantially the great 
problem remains still the same ; it is a matter of supreme 
importance now as ever. The interest and value of such 
a study need no comment. 

We cite as representatives of the most enlightened 
school of apologists, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Cle- 



530 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ment of Alexandria, and Origen, in the East ; in the 
West, the names of Hippolytus and Minutius Felix 
alone deserve to be added to this roll of illustrious 
masters. Justin enunciates the principle of his school 
with great precision, but is not himself always faithful 
to it. Clement frees that principle from the restrictions 
which fettered it in the treatment of his predecessor; 
he gives it a more solid basis, handling with equal 
boldness and profundity the leading question — the rela- 
tions of reason and faith. In Origen we find all the 
fruitful results of the better method handed down to 
him, and which he applies to the most various and 
delicate problems connected with the defence of the 
faith. With him the apology of primitive Christianity 
reaches its culminating point; from that time it steadily 
declines, and finally loses all its power and freeness. 
We shall especially aim to give prominence to that 
which is original and individual in the work of each of 
the defenders of the Christian faith. In substance, all 
use the same arguments ; all set the Christian virtues 
in strong contrast to the vices of paganism ; all dwell 
on the heroism of the martyrs. In order to avoid use- 
less repetitions, we shall pass rapidly over this class 
of proofs, until we come to its fullest and highest 
expression in the work of Origen. 

§ II. The School of Liberal Apologists, 
(a.) Melito and Justin Martyr. 

Melito of Sardis did more than present an eloquent 
petition on behalf of the Christians to Marcus Aurelius ; 
he also wrote to the emperors, under the form of 
discourses, an apology which, while very concise, is 
animated by the true spirit of primitive Christianity, 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 53I 

and worthy, therefore, to introduce the great school of 
liberal apologists.* It breathes throughout a noble 
confidence in the power of the truth over man. The 
author has no wish that truth should force its entrance 
into the heart by constraint ; it is to make use of words 
as a key to unlock the cabinet. 

But the true founder of the Christian apology is 
Justin Martyr. We have already detailed the circum- 
stances which prepared this generous, noble thinker to 
apprehend and to lay down the broad and suggestive 
principle of that apologetic school, which he may be 
said to have initiated. Our task now is to examine his 
writings, in order to ascertain how he himself under- 
stood the principle, and in what manner he gave 
expression to it.t 

Justin, like St. John, calls the Divine and Eternal 
Truth, the Word. The former disciple of Plato re- 
joiced to find in the Gospel the philosophical language 
which had fascinated his youthful mind, but he truly 
filled the old bottle with the new wine of revelation ; 
the Word is no longer in his eyes a mere divine idea, 
vague and impersonal, as in the system of Plato and of 
Philo. He lovingly recognises and adores in Him "the 

* The fragments of Melito's Apology have been discovered by 
Cureton, in a Syriac MS. in the British Museum, which appears 
to belong to the 7th century. The text, with a Latin translation 
by M. Renan,is found in Vol. II. of the " Specilegium Solemnense," 
edited by Dom Pitra, p. 38-53. 

f Beside the works already referred to upon Justin Martyr, I shall 
quote the recently-published work of the Abbe Freppel, entitled, 
" Les Apologistes du Deuxieme Siecle," Paris, i860. It contains 
an exposition of Justin's Apology, somewhat diffuse, and wanting in 
exactness on the main points. The author has inserted in his 
book one chapter much to be deplored, in which he endeavours to 
show that Justin Martyr does not claim liberty of conscience for all, 
but only the liberty of the truth. We enter an earnest protest 
against this wretched sophistry, which would vindicate all the per- 
secutions of the past. 



532 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

eternal and ineffable Word of God, who was made 
man, that by Himself sharing our sufferings, we might 
be healed.* Justin rises far above the fantastic 
world of Eons into the warm light of love ; the Word 
is, indeed, to him, "the only begotten Son, who is in 
the bosom of the Father." 

This Word, who is not an idea, but a living person, 
is, nevertheless, essentially wisdom and reason — the 
living, eternal Reason. All creatures endowed with 
intelligence and free-will share in His nature ; reason 
is a seed of the Word, a partial communication of His 
being. "The germ of the Word," says Justin, "is 
implanted in every one of the human race."t It must 
not be supposed that by reason, Justin intends merely 
the intellect ; the Word is not in man, any more than 
in God, simply an idea ; it is the source of all good as 
well as of all knowledge ; it is the principle of the 
moral as well as of the intellectual life ; it is the sub- 
stance of the higher life in free and responsible beings. 
In accordance with this view, Justin ascribes to the 
presence of the seed of the Word in man, all the noble 
actions which did honour to Greece and Rome. Right- 
eousness sprung from the Word. All that was truly 
elevated in the virtues of the Stoics, and, in general, all 
the virtues of the ancients, emanated from Him.;}; 

It was not possible to give clearer assertion to the 
doctrine of the divine parentage of the human soul, and 
of its natural relation to the Word. Created by Him, 
made in His image, and formed, in a manner, of His 

* Tbv cnrb dyevtjrov Kal dppijrov 9eov \6yov TrpocKWOvp.iv Kal aycnrwfitv 
iTTnh) Kal di nua-Q (ivOpuTrog ykyoviv. (Justin Martyr, " Apologia," II., 
"Opera," 51.) 

f Aid to tpQvrov rav-i ysyei dv9p<jJ7ru)v tTirlpjxa tov Xoyov. (Ibid., 1 1. 46.) 
J Yldvrag tovq kclv 67rw«rc//7rorf Kara \6yov j3iovv (nrovddZovTaQ. 
(Ibid.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 533 

substance, it is united to Him by the most intimate 
ties. In other words, all that is truly human is divine, 
since it is by this participation in the nature of the 
Word that man is distinguished from the lower 
creatures. Christianity, as not a mere partial mani- 
festation of the Word, but the complete revelation of 
Him, must be regarded as pre-eminently the religion 
of mankind. It finds indeed its primary point of con- 
tact in the higher nature of man ; it recognises itself in 
all the constituent elements of the moral being. In 
coming among us, it comes to its own, and in order to 
establish its titles to our confidence, it is enough for it 
to make fully evident this pre-established harmony 
between the Incarnate Word and the inner Word 
dwelling within us. Thus is enunciated the grand 
fundamental principle of the Christian apology. It is 
easy to recognise, in these profound views of Justin, 
the influence of the prologue of the Gospel of John. 
The beloved disciple was the first to teach this great 
doctrine of the Word. To him, as to Justin, the Word 
is the eternal and living manifestation of God, partially 
communicated in creation to every free and intelligent 
being, but only fully revealed and given to the world in 
the Incarnation. The Word is the uncreated light 
which lightens every man that cometh into the world, 
and He dwelt, full of grace and truth, with that race 
which, by its origin, belonged to Him. John has thus 
established the essential relation between the soul and 
revelation, between man and the Word. He may then 
fairly be regarded as the great creator of the Christian 
apology, for the sole mission of that apology is to fasten 
more closely the links previously existing between 
humanity and revelation. Proof is a thing impossible 
where the points of contact are wanting between the* 



534 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

truth to be demonstrated, and the mind to be convinced. 
Without a fulcrum, the most powerful lever can raise 
nothing, and plays in empty air. 

Justin having thus laid down the principle of every 
earnest apology, it remains for us to ascertain what 
application he made of it, for granted that the human 
soul has within it a germ of the Word, it does not follow 
that prior to Christianity, and outside the line of posi- 
tive revelations made to one privileged portion of 
humanity, it should have developed this germ. It is at 
least possible that under the fatal influence exerted over 
it ever since the Fall, it may have let the germ lie idle 
and unfruitful, like the talent of the wicked servant in 
the parable. Such is not Justin Martyr's view. He 
admits without reservation the gravity of the Fall, and 
all its lamentable consequences ; he even exaggerates 
the direct influence of the powers of darkness upon 
mankind, leading man away from God ; he proudly 
maintains the superiority of the prophets to the greatest 
of pagan sages ; but he is nevertheless persuaded that 
the seed of the Word was not unfruitful in the soil of 
paganism, and that, owing to his divine origin, man 
had a presentiment or dim prevision of the highest 
truths of revelation. Revelation was in the ancient 
world in the condition of an undeveloped germ, often 
covered under with a parasitic vegetation of mytholo- 
gical legends, fostered by demoniacal influence. Never- 
theless, beneath this spurious growth, still remained 
the immortal germ. In some pure souls of the pagan 
world, it had attained so beautiful a development, that 
Christianity may fairly claim them as her own. Justin 
does not hesitate to recognise as Christians, some who 
lived before the coming of the Redeemer. " All the 
truths," he says, "which philosophers and legislators 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 535 

have discovered and proclaimed, they derived from the 
Word, of whom they had caught a partial glimpse."* 
The doctrines of Plato are not contrary to those of 
Jesus Christ ; we would rather say, they are not in all 
points in harmony with them.t So is it also with other 
philosophers, as, for example, the Stoics; thus is it with 
the poets and historians. Each has recognised partially 
some truth which was in harmony with his being, by 
the Light of the Word implanted within him, and he 
has well expressed it. J We teach that Christ is the 
first-born Son of God, that Word, the seed of which is 
in every man's heart. All who have lived conformably 
with the Word are Christians, even though they may 
have been treated as atheists ; such, among the Greeks, 
were Socrates and Heraclitus, and, among barbarians, 
Abraham, Ananias, Azariah, Misrael, and Elias.§ In 
the same manner, those who at the same period, long 
before Jesus Christ, lived in opposition to reason and 
the Word were Antichrists, that is to say, enemies to 
Christ, and the murderers of men who lived according 
to the Word or to reason. Justin thus traces back the 
martyrology of the truth to the earliest ages of the 
world. He shows that philosophers, like the Stoics, 
who only presented, in the midst of many inconsis- 
tencies, a very faint realisation of the fragmentary, 
doctrine of the Word, did not escape persecution. To 
what ignoble treatment was not he subjected, whom 
Justin regards as the great prophet of Hellenism, the 
noble and courageous Socrates, whose system men 

* Kara Xoyov fikpoQ. ("Apologia," II., " Opera," 48.) 

t Ovx otl dXXoTpia ian to. YlXdrojvoQ di8a.yfjia.Ta. rov Xpiarov, dX/V on 

oi'K iarL iravrr] Ofxoia. (Ibid., 5 I.) 

% "Atto fitpovg tou cnrpenaritcov Qdov \6yov to Gvyytvkg opaiv. (Ibid.) 
§ Oi jj.£t& Xoyov fiiujcrqvng, xpt-VTiavoi eiox" olov tv"EXXrj<jt jikv ~2(jJKpaTi]Q 

Kai'UpaicXsiTog. (Ibid., 83.) 



53^ THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

were so ready to vaunt in opposition to the new reli- 
gion ? " When Socrates," he says, " sought by words 
of truth and able argument to free men from the influ- 
ence of the demons, these caused him to be put to 
death as an atheist, sacrilegious and an innovator, by 
the hands of the friends of iniquity."* Justin applied 
to the Hellenists the terrible words spoken by Christ 
to the Pharisees: "Ye build the sepulchres of the 
prophets, and your fathers killed them." Greece forgot 
that she had in former times slain or persecuted the 
illustrious philosophers in whom now she made her 
boast. 

The apologist is not content with asserting a general 
analogy between the teachings of ancient wisdom and 
the new religion ; he shows us wherein lay this pre- 
conception of Christianity, and he frees it from the 
errors or superstitions by which it was darkened. The 
belief in immortality, in the resurrection, the expecta- 
tion of a future judgment, according to which souls 
shall be admitted into an abode of blessedness or cast 
into Gehenna, these are the capital truths which the 
philosophers and poets of antiquity proclamed in anti- 
cipation of Christ. Had not Plato taught that all things 
were created and fashioned by God, and had not the 
Stoics declared that the world should be consumed by 
fire ? To find confirmation of the reprobation of idolatry 
expressed by Christians, it was not needful to have re- 
course to a philosopher. The poet Menander had said 
that he who makes the idol is superior to his work, 
and the plaudits of Greece had greeted his words. 
Justin carries his argument even further; he appeals 
not only to poetry and to philosophy, but also to the 
popular religion, the testimony of which he holds to be 
* "Apologia," II. 56. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 537 

precious, rude as it is in form. He declares himself 
able to discover, under the confused medley of fables 
and myths, the anticipation of some of the most re- 
markable dogmas of Christianity. Why should the 
divinity of Christ be a stumbling-block to the pagans ? 
Had they not gone on multiplying apotheoses, from 
Hercules down to the last of the Caesars ? " If we say 
that the Saviour of the world was born of a virgin, 
such an assertion can in no way shock those, who 
attribute an equally miraculous origin to Perseus. If 
the death of our God is an offence to you, why do you 
make mention of the death of most of the sons of 
Jupiter ? If the miracles of Christ seem to you too 
amazing, speak you no more of the marvellous cures 
wrought by Esculapius ! " * 

Justin committed the error of not explaining clearly 
the apologetic value of this analogy between pagan 
fables and Gospel history. The conclusion of his 
reasoning would lead to the idea that he desired simply 
to establish the rights of the Christians against their 
persecuting judges. He concludes, in fact, with these 
words: "Why should the name of Christ render us 
the objects of hatred, since we say the same things 
as the Greeks ? " t But a more careful study will 
convince us that his design has a much wider scope. 
He wished first of all to establish that the great truths 
of Christianity had on their side the testimony of the 
human conscience, as that testimony had found ex- 
pression in philosophy, and this was perfectly in 
accordance with his doctrine of the universal Word. 
He was insensibly led on to point out analogies of the 

* "Apologia," I. 66,67. 

t Td o^ota rolg"EXkr]<n Xiyovreg, fiovoi jxiaov^itQa di dvofia tov Xpurrov, 
Ibid., 11.68) 

35 



53^ THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

same nature between the Gospel and the religion of 
the ancient world, but, soon shocked by the absurd 
fables with which he has to deal, he abandons his first 
idea; the thread of his reasoning breaks in his hand, 
and he leaves unfinished the great apology, that which 
establishes the ancient titles of Christianity to human 
credence, to return to a purely forensic defence, which 
is the province of the mere advocate. He should have 
gone further on this delicate ground ; the apologist 
would then have discovered, even in this precursive 
parody of the Gospel history, even in the fantastic 
creations of a wild mythology, the unchanging aspira- 
tions of the human heart, which anticipated, as in a 
dream, that which it was afterwards to receive in Jesus 
Christ. But for such a work, nothing less was required 
than the deep discerning eye of St. Paul, which could 
read in the inscription on the idol temple the yearning 
cry of the heart for God. The Christian apology was 
but in its infancy, and was not yet prepared to put so 
bold an interpretation on paganism. This w T as a stage 
of advancement ultimately to be reached at Alexandria. 
Justin had only for the moment indicated the use that 
might be made of the pagan myths ; the gleam of light 
was too sudden and too transient to leave on his mind 
more than a vague perception. 

We here touch on the grand imperfection of his 
system. His conception of Christianity is rather of a 
doctrinal revelation than of a divine w r ork of redemption. 
Thus he misses altogether the essential difference be- 
tween Christianity and all that had preceded it. Had 
he seen in the new religion primarily a work of repara- 
tion, the true restoration of humanity, he would have 
found no difficulty in distinguishing it clearly from all 
anterior philosophies and religions, while still holding 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 539 

fast the great idea, that everything in the past pointed 
to Christ. Between the Gospel and all antecedent 
systems there would then be the same relations and 
differences as exist between a desire and its satisfaction. 
Desire stretches forward to grasp its object; it makes 
advances towards it, cries aloud for it ; but no desire, 
however ardent, can produce or take the place of its 
object. In the same manner, humanity may have had 
yearnings after Christianity, may have cried aloud for 
it, but could not have given birth to it. Nothing can 
be more legitimate than an appeal to these presenti- 
ments of the soul, w T hich testify to its inborn need of 
Christ, whether they be expressed in popular myths, 
or assume the more elevated " form of philosophical 
systems. It is very certain that these analogies can 
detract nothing from the peculiar character of a religion 
which" is essentially a fact, and a tremendous fact. The 
case stands differently, however, when, as with Justin, 
the fact becomes absorbed in the idea. The doctrine, 
the idea, w r as present, with more or less admixture of 
error and superstition, in the divine aspirations of man- 
kind prior to Christianity ; and the apologist who has 
not given to the fact all its importance, is led involun- 
tarily to regard the new religion, as but the complement 
and consummation of the ancient religions and philo- 
sophies. It is in this light that Justin Martyr too often 
presents Christianity. 

We are especially conscious of this defect in his 
refutation of Judaism. He cannot perceive the difference 
between the two Testaments, and loses himself in a 
maze of allegorical exegesis. To him belongs, never- 
theless, the honourable distinction of being the initiator 
of the great Christian apology. 

We pass rapidly over Athenagoras, who added no- 



540 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

thing to the train of argument presented by Justin. 
The grand moral evidence to which he eloquently 
appeals does not fit in with the rest of his system ; it 
seems like a stone hewn for another edifice. It does 
not enter into the construction of his apology, or, at 
least, does not occupy therein its due position. We 
must look elsewhere to mark what strength and solidity 
it lends to the Christian apology when it is made its 
basis. 

(b.) Clement. 

With Clement we enter upon the broadest and richest 
apology of Christian antiquity. Learning is, in him, 
associated with much' power of original thought ; in 
penetration and argumentative subtlety he equals the 
most able of Athenian philosophers, and his large heart 
and vivid imagination shed warmth and brightness over 
all his reasoning. In his works we never find the ex- 
pression of mere feeling filling up the breaches of logic ; 
his superiority consists mainly in this, that he engages 
in his subject the powers of the whole man — soul and 
spirit, reason and conscience. We have already enu- 
merated his works in telling the story of his life. For 
the present, we shall extract from them only his apology 
for Christianity. This divides itself naturally into two 
parts ; the one is directed against error, the other es- 
tablishes the claims of truth. The former is less 
original than the latter, but both bear the clear impress 
of a superior mind. 

Interesting and valuable as is his treatment of the 
whole subject, we shall not now follow him over ground 
occupied by others, but shall devote our attention to 
those features of his argument which are really new 
and original. Clement, like Justin, starts from the 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 54I 

deep conviction that there still exisjts, notwithstanding 
the Fall, an essential relation between God and man. 
He does not for a moment set the creature on a par 
with the Creator. He maintains the lofty barrier of 
separation between the creature and the self-existent 
Being, and carefully guards against any possible pan- 
theistic misconception. According to him it would 
be impiety to imagine that God is like unto us, and 
subject to the fluctuations of our changing nature. It 
is not possible to measure the distance between our- 
selves and Him ; it is infinite. It would be folly to 
pretend that we are of the same substance ; w r e are 
neither an emanation from Him, nor a part of Himself. 
He called us into life by a free act of His will, and our 
higher nature is the gift of His goodness. The divine 
in us is not, then, a necessary outflow of the Divine 
essence ; it is communicated by the free act of creation; 
it is the bestowment of infinite love ; but though thus 
communicated by special grace, it is none the less the 
inalienable privilege of man ; in fact, this gift con- 
stitutes the peculiar character of the moral creature.* 

The great organ of the divine element is the Word. 
By Him is given the manifestation of God, not only in 

* "Strom.," II. xvii. 74, 75. It is in this sense we interpret this 
difficult passage. In a former lecture the author seems to deny- 
altogether the Divine parentage of man. But a closer examination 
shows that Clement was only anxious to set aside the pantheistic 
notion of an identity of essence between the creature and the 
Creator-God, as appears clearly from the passage in which he 
establishes that we are not the constituent elements of Deity : pnre 
fiopiwp ovTtav avTov. ("Strom.," II. xvii. 75.) He has certainly 
given most sweeping expression to his idea in the passage of which 
we are speaking. It must be explained and modified bv the general 
principles of his system. It is evident that he simply wished to 
establish the theory of a free creation, in opposition to that of 
emanation. "We are," he says, "the workmanship of the Divine 
freedom." (Aldi-^ ry ipyov uvai rov OtXrjfiarog avrov.) 



542 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

revelation, but previously in creation. The moral life 
of man is a radiation from the uncreated light. Cle- 
ment gives an original and poetical form to his 
thoughts, though surcharged with erudite allusions, in 
the commencement of his discourse to the Greeks, He 
compares the influence of the Word upon human 
passions held in control by Him to that of Orpheus 
over the wild beasts, who lost their fierceness at the 
harmonious accents of his voice. The Son of God, 
having descended from a higher world, caused the earth 
to hear a new song, which entranced while it calmed 
those who listened to it. The Gospel revelation was 
not, however, the first anthem of the Word.* " W T hen 
He established the beautiful ordinances of the universe, 
bringing all its elements into harmony, he drew forth a 
glorious symphony which filled the world with music. t 
This is an immortal song; it is the concert of beings, all 
in true accord : from the beginning to the end all take 
up the strain. This music of the universe is not regu- 
lated by Orphic measures, but by the Divine measure, 
according to which David modulated his psalms.^ 
Creation and revelation answer each other in the praise 
of their Author. But in this concert of creation the 
sweeter lyre of the Word, that on which his hands 
delight to play, is not the inanimate and insensible 
world : it is man. In him the sweet accord comes from 
the union between soul and body. Brought into har- 
mony by the Divine Spirit, his whole being makes 
sweet music unto God." 

Clement carries out to their full issues these exalted 

* " Protrept.," I. 2. 

f "Iva fir) o\og 6 KOTfiog nvT(p dpfjiovia. y£vr)Tai. (Ibid., I. 5O 
X 'RpfidaaTO to ttclv, ov Kara ri)v Bpamov fiovaacrjv, Kara 5e Tr)v iraTptov 
rov 8tov j3ou\i]cjiv, i)v s^f/XajiTf Aaj3id. (Ibid.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 543 

views of human nature, but without falling into 
exaggeration. If it is true that man is distin 
guished from other beings by that which is divine in 
him, by that which the Word has communicated to him 
of His own essence, it is evident that the truly human 
and the truly divine are one. The more man develops 
the higher life within him, which he derives from the 
Eternal Word, the more truly he will be man, that is, 
the privileged creature of the Almighty. Thus, for 
him to violate the moral law, is not only to offend the 
Word, by whom it was engraven on his heart and who 
lives in it ;* it is also to degrade his own nature ; he 
renounces his place in humanity by breaking the link 
which unites him to God, and falls into the condition 
of the mere animal. " He," says Clement, "" who sins 
against divine reason, or the Word, is no longer a 
rational being ; he is an animal deprived of reason, the 
slave of his desires. "t It follows from all these consi- 
derations that so far from there being any opposition 
between true nature and revelation, there is between 
them an original and necessary harmony. This being 
established, Clement can prove without difficulty that 
the most divine religion is also the most human. 

The apologist is not satisfied with stating as a prin- 
ciple, the agreement subsisting between man and the 
Word. He seeks to demonstrate that man, in his 
actual condition, is constituted for the Word as the 
Word is historically manifested in Christianity; and 
here commences his apology, properly so called, for the 
new religion. If, in fact, it is proved that revelation 
satisfies the heart and the mind, its titles to our confi- 

* "Pasdag./ 5 I. xiii. § 101. 

f Ov yap iari Xoyucbg tTi 6 irapd \6yov apaprdvojv, 6?]piov de dXoyov, 

(Ibid.) 



544 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dence ought to be deemed sufficient, and we have but 
to accept it. All assurance ultimately rests upon a 
correspondence of the soul or spirit with the order of 
truth, which we are to appropriate. So long as this 
relation is not established, there may be blind submis- 
sion, enforced adherence, but there is no conviction ; 
the requisite evidence is wanting. Now that which is 
not proved, is to the mind as though it had no existence. 
Such are the general laws of certainty. Clement accepts 
them in their integrity ; he asks no privilege, no im- 
munity, because he well knows that anything that 
might seem to be gained by such means would ulti- 
mately prove loss. He undertakes to show that the 
certainty of the Christian is a genuine assurance, 
obtained by legitimate methods and in conformity with 
the unalterable laws which govern the world of mind. 
His task will not be an easy one, for like all the 
defenders of Christianity, he will have to combat deeply 
rooted prejudices. In truth, the representatives of 
purely human philosophy compassionate the disciples 
of Christ. They maintain a radical opposition between 
reason and faith, as if reason was always enlightened 
and faith blind. To hear them, one might suppose 
reason to be the peculium of their school ; that it would 
be sought for in vain beyond the limits of their systems, 
and that the faith of the Christians is 'simple irration- 
ality. Such estimates are formed on a basis of idle 
prejudice. This Clement is about to show in treating 
the great question of the relations of reason and faith, 
with a depth and strength of argument which have not 
yet been surpassed. The boldness of his apologetic 
method has often prevented his being even understood. 
He refutes, in the first place, the notion that Chris- 
tianity sacrifices reason to laith. The two are, as he 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 545 

represents, two modes of gaining knowledge which 
supplement each other, and which are both legitimate 
and indispensable, each in its own sphere. Intelligence 
is a gift of God of which we are to make habitual use;* 
but reason, left to itself, does not communicate the sub- 
stance of truth, those first principles which constitute 
the essence of religion. The method by which we rise 
to the apprehension of these principles is at once more 
elevated and more rapid than any which reason teaches 
us. Reason, however, is not less called into exercise 
to enable us to trace back consequences to their pre- 
mises, or to follow out premises to their final con- 
clusions ; it alone unrolls before our eyes the serried 
lines of argument. It is reason, also, which enables us to 
distinguish the analogies and differences of things, even 
to their finest shades, and which teaches us to avoid 
that vague indeterminateness of expression which is so 
dangerous and so fertile in errors, even when treating 
of the sacred texts. t Logic, that lawgiver of the world 
of thought, lends very precious aid to the Christian. 
After all, speech is an act, and it is of moment that 
this act should be in conformity with reason and with 
the right. X Thus regarded, logic is, as it were, the 
morality of language, but it has a yet more elevated 
part to perform ; beneath the word it discerns -the 
thought, and teaches us to ascend from the particular 
to the general, to group and distinguish ideas. § This 
noble science is as a rampart which impedes the pro- 
gress of the sophists, and prevents them from trampling 
on the truth. || It is therefore very necessary that he 

* T>}v ovvemv QzoTrtjXTTTov. (" Strom.," V. viii. § 62.) 
-j- Ibid., VI. x. § 82. 

+ Ou-xi icai to Xkytiv tpyov iarl • (Ibid., I. ix. § 45.) § Ibid., I. ix. § 44.) 
j| Olov QpiyKog ken diaXsicriKi) wq jjli) Kara—anXaQai Trpbg rcZi> aocjitorojv 
r>)v a\i]Quav. (Ibid., VI. x. § 8 1.) 



546 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

who will sustain the cause of God, should be versed in 
philosophical studies. All human sciences may bring 
their tribute to Christianity ; it will borrow from each, 
weapons for the defence of its cause, and will regard 
all as potent auxiliaries to be arrayed under its 
standard.* This breadth of view was a source of 
perpetual apprehension to timid Christians, who would 
gladly have placed a deep gulf between Christianity 
and the wisdom of the ancients. Clement, as he un- 
folded these grand views of truth, heard the displeased 
murmurs of the bigoted and narrow party, ever ready 
to condemn that which passes its comprehension. We 
feel, from the emphasis with which he speaks, that 
he had been irritated by the clamour of those who, in 
the pride of ignorance, reviled the superior knowledge 
which they could not attain, and chafed under a 
galling sense of hopeless inferiority. " There are 
men," says Clement ironically, " so admirably endowed 
that they think they have nothing to do with philo- 
sophy, logic, or even the study of nature, but that 
pure and simple faith is all-sufficient."? Thus to 
despise knowledge is to seek to enjoy the fruit of the 
vine without taking the pains to cultivate it. Human 
knowledge does not plant the heavenly vine ; we do not 
owe to it the stock whence we derive life and sap ; 
nevertheless, by assiduous cultivation, it promotes the 
fruitfulness of the vine. J If the soul grasps the essence 
of truth in an instant by intuition, it does not follow that 
the development of the thought is to no purpose; just 
as education strikes from our hearts the sparks of 
truth placed there by God, so does science develop all 

* "Strom.," VI. x. §82. 

'f Mnvryv Ktxi iptXiiv t>)v irianv a~airovaiv. (Ibid., I. ix. § 43.) 



Ibid. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 547 

the treasures of faith. To the objection that ignorance 
itself can comprehend the Gospel, Clement nobly replies, 
that the Christian knows not only how to live in 
poverty, but also in wealth.* None, after all, dispense 
entirely with logic, and those who emphatically assume 
the name of the orthodox make use of philosophy un- 
wittingly every time they speak reasonably.! It is idle 
to lay a ban on mental culture and free inquiry, and 
to appeal only to the simplicity of the faith. Clement 
urges that God has spoken to man in very various ways, 
and that it is not so simple and so easy as men think to 
exhaust the riches of a revelation which is, like its 
Author, infinite. i The narrow-minded fear philosophy 
as children fear ghosts. § They are afraid, they say, 
that it will lead them astray, and destroy their faith. 
In that case they have not much to lose. " If their 
faith, I do not say their knowledge, is of such a kind, 
that it is at the mercy of a mere trick of words, then 
let them lose it,|| for their base fear proves clearly 
that what they think they possess is not the truth. 
Truth is invincible ; error alone is soon dissipated. 
Whoever confesses that he is wavering in his faith, 
avows by that confession that he has neither the 
touch-stone of the money-changer, nor the criterion of 
truth. "H What right has he to sit at that table where 
pieces of money of every sort are presented, if he 
cannot distinguish between the true and the false ? 
The righteous, says David, shall stand fast for ever. 
Nothing can move him ; he possesses the incorruptible 

* "Strom.," I. vi. §31. 

f Ot 6p6o86%a.Grai KcCKovfievoi. (Ibid., I. ix. § 45.) 

t Ylokvfi&ptJQ icai iroXvTpoTVujQ \a\i\aag, ovx curXuig yviooi^rai. (Ibid., 
VI. x. § 81.) 

§ KaQcnrep 01 Traidec rd [iop/j.o\vK:6ia. (Ibid., VI. X. § 80.) 

y Au9ijTu>. (Ibid., IV. x. § 81.) IT Ibid., VI. x. § 81. 



1 54 8 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

inheritance, and is so much the more secure against 
the subtleties of- language if he has not despised the 
study of logic, and can but use skill so acquired in 
detecting sophistries. 

The supposed opposition between reason and faith 
thus falls, to the ground, but only if it is well under- 
stood that reason shall restrict itself within its own 
domain, and shall not claim the power of revealing 
first principles. Reason does not produce truth as 
a tree produces its fruit ; its province is neither to in- 
vent nor to discover, but simply to receive truth ; all its 
toil would be in vain, if it did not receive from a higher 
power the materials upon which it may usefully work. 
That higher power is faith. Let it not be said that 
Christianity, by assuming this ground, places itself 
outside the conditions of a rational doctrine, and 
claims a blind assent. On the contrary, it remains 
faithful to the universal laws of knowledge. All science 
commences with an act of faith, that is to say, by a 
direct intuition of the first principles upon which it 
rests. It is not by the long and winding path of logic 
that first truths are reached ; they present themselves 
to the mind, impress themselves upon it. Indis- 
putable axioms are not the results of discussion, for, 
in that case, discussion might undo its own work. 
Evidence on any subject proceeds therefore first of 
all from faith, for what is faith but the sudden intuition 
by which truth is presented to, and grasped by, the 
mind? 

The representatives of human science most opposed 
to Christianity, are bound to admit the lawfulness 
of such a method. Epicurus calls faith an antici- 
pation of the mind, that is to say, a spontaneous 
movement of thought towards that which is evident,' 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 549 

or a lively perception of the evidence.* According to 
him, any demonstration is impossible without this 
anticipation of the truth, which precedes its logical 
development. Aristotle expressed the same idea when 
he said that the test of truth is faith ; t and the divine 
Plato declared, in the book of the law, that he is happy 
who is made from the beginning a participant of the 
truth. This direct participation is, in his view, the 
royal road to truth. J 

It must not be imagined that faith initiates us into 
the spiritual world alone. Those who neglect faith will 
be as unable to comprehend nature as grace. He who 
will believe in nothing but a sensible experience or 
logical demonstration, placing his finger as it were on 
that which can be grasped and felt, will perceive only 
the grosser elements of the world ; he confounds matter 
and spirit, the creation and the Creator. The first 
principle eludes him under the , multiplicity of its 
manifestations; and thus it will be, until by faith — that 
is, by direct intuition — he rises to the simple, universal 
principle, which is separable and quite distinct from 
matter itself.§ It must be freely admitted, then, 
that first causes are above demonstration ; faith alone 
enables us to perceive them in the domain of nature 
or of grace. Leaving behind the mere evidence of the 
senses, and rising far above all mere opinion, faith 
hastens into the presence of absolute truth, and rests 
in the light. || Feeling or intuition is the introduction 
to science.^" 

* UpbXrj^iv elvai Siavoiag rqv tt'igtiv. (" Strom." II. iv. § 16.) 
\ Ibid., II. iv. § 15. 

\ *H tov aXrjQivov [SaGiXeujg im<TTr)fir] f3a<n\iicr). (Ibid., II. iv. § 1 8.) 
§ To cncXovv o ovre avv vXtj kariv. (Ibid., II. IV. § 14.) 
I 'H iriariQ Ss diarwv alaO^Tojv oSevcraaa -rrpbg ra a\ptvdrj airtvdei. (Ibid.) 
4f 'H (uv a'i<r9r]7tQ fTrifidOpa rrjg ETriarrjfirjg. (Ibid.) 



550 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

If these principles are true, even in relation to the 
science of the visible, how much more so in relation 
to the science of the divine and invisible ! Here pre- 
eminently feeling must play a leading part, and faith 
must be manifestly the first condition of all knowledge. 
Human wisdom, however lofty its range, cannot attain 
to God. The mystery of His being is profound and im- 
penetrable. He is represented by that cloud from the 
midst of which came the thunder of His voice on 
Sinai. Thus was Moses led to exclaim, " I beseech 
thee show me thy glory." But the God who is thus 
raised immeasurably above us by His uncreated 
essence, is brought near to our hearts by His love. 
" His divine power is ever ready to reveal itself to us 
in blessing and teaching." He imparts Himself to 
man simply through the medium of faith ; this faith, 
treated as folly by the Greeks, is the direct; reception of 
the truth, antecedent to any demonstration ; it is the 
assurance of faith, " the substance of things hoped 
for, the evidence of things not seen."* It rests not on 
material proof, since it is the communication to the 
soul of that which is immaterial and divine. " Thus 
the spirit, rising above all worlds, above all the spheres 
of creation, enters the lofty region where dwells the 
Lord of all worlds ; it is no more in danger of having 
its beliefs carried about with every wind of doctrine, 
like dead or fallen leaves tossed by the tempest ; it 
has arrived at the immutable by a way which is itself 
immutable." t 

We are not to suppose, however, that the intuition 
of faith is entirely a passive thing, and that man has 

* l l Strom.," II. ii. §5. 

f "Ovtujq yap drps7TT(t)g Trpbg to drp£7rrov t) Trpocayioyr). (Ibid., II. 
XL §510 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 551 

merely to wait for divine illumination without using 
any effort of the will. Undoubtedly, grace plays an 
important part in the regeneration of man ; God is the 
maker both of the light we are to perceive and of the 
outward eye that perceives it. It is He who, knowing 
our inability to conceive of the Absolute Being, has 
sent a Divine Master to reveal to us the ineffable 
mysteries of His nature. Our feebleness is such, that 
even under His direction we see but imperfectly. 
Thus we have the greatest need of the divine grace, 
which is, happily, infinite in its fulness and freeness.* 
Nevertheless, it is unalterably sure that God requires 
our concurrence, our efforts. He grants eternal salva- 
tion to those who labour with Him for the development 
within themselves of knowledge and holiness. t We 
must be like that gladiator who said to Jupiter : " If I 
have fitly prepared myself for the combat, give me the 
victory." Faith, that first triumph of the Christian, 
is obtained only at this price ; for the pure in heart 
shall alone see God. 

Clement thus allots an important part to the will in 
the attainment of certainty in religion ; the share which 
he ascribes to moral determination as influencing our 
beliefs, is one of the most remarkable features of his 
apology. Like is only perceived by like ; man, there- 
fore, will only arrive at the direct intuition of God, 
when he shall have truly drawn nigh to God and put 
away evil. " Just as when the soil is barren the seed 
sown is useless, so the best teaching bears no fruit 
without the consent of him who receives it. The dry 
straw, which is easily inflammable, catches fire at the 

* 'RaOsvei irpbg Ka-cikrr^iv r&v ovtwv 7) 4>vx''l .... fidXiara xpyCop-iv 
XxpiToe. (" Strom.," V. i. § 7.) 

f SuiTTjpiav role avvtpyovai irpbg yvwoiv. (Ibid., VII. vii. § 48.) 



552 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

first spark. The magnet attracts the iron because of 
their affinity for each other."* It follows that religious 
truth will only attract us when it acts upon us like a 
sacred magnet. We must have ears to hear, and eyes to 
see. " It is with a new eye, with a new ear, and a new 
heart, that the new things revealed by Christ are seen 
and heard. "t The natural man has no perception of 
them ; they are to him like those black ashes, which, in 
the prophetic image, are cast forth from the dark 
cloud in which God had enshrouded Himself; but, on 
the other hand, these very same oracles are to the 
believer full of light and truth. J " The way of the 
wicked is as darkness," saith the Scripture, to teach 
that the path of pride can never lead to knowledge. 

Faith, like unbelief, has a moral cause. The soul 
sees only when it desires to see, hears only when it 
wills to hear. At the basis of belief is an act of the will, 
which brings out the affinity between man and God. 
This act is possible, not only because divine grace is 
largely bestowed upon us, but also because, according 
to Clement's doctrine, a germ of the Word is hidden 
deep in every human breast. We are in discord or in 
harmony with religious truth, in the measure in which 
we have cultivated it ; the greater or less development 
of the divine element within us, depends on our moral 
attitude towards it. The part thus assigned to human 
freedom runs through all the stages of faith. Faith 
commences with an aspiration after the light, a yearning 
after the highest truth. This desire implies an initial 
act of the will. "The beginning of wisdom is the 

* 'H \i6oQ t] 6pv\ov[Atvr] sXicei tov triSrjpov Sia <rvyyevuav. (" Strom.," 
II. vi. § 26.) 

f Kaivip ocpQaXfMp, Kcuvy ctKoy, ncuvy Kapdtp. (Ibid., II. iv. § 1 5.) 
t Ibid., VI. xv. § 116. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 553 

desire to seek after that which is useful. A settled 
determination is therefore of great weight in the ac- 
quisition of truth.* It is in this sense that voluntary 
faith is the basis of our salvation. t" The will leads 
the way, for the rational faculties do but obey the will. 
What thou wilt, thou canst ! Faith and obedience 
depend on ourselves. £ " Ask and ye shall receive. 
In its essence, the act of faith is an act of obedience, 
and it manifests itself, first of all, in earnest inquiry. 
The living spark received into the soul needs to be 
fanned into a flame, § and that idle curiosity must be 
avoided which would lead the soul merely to walk up 
and down in the truth, as men walk up and down in a 
town to admire its buildings. || The first thing which men 
demand of the sun, is not dazzling brightness ; the first 
thing they want is warmth and life. So should it be 
with us and the Sun of the soul. Clement assigns a 
moral cause to every species of unbelief. To the pagans 
he says: " You will not free yourselves from the passions 
which are the diseases of the soul, nor from sin, which 
is the soul's everlasting death. "^[ Man can only arrive 
at truth after he has purified his soul and placed 
himself among the violent, who take the kingdom of 
heaven by force, not by philosophic reasonings, but by 
the repudiation of evil and by perseverance in the holy 
war of good.** Thus is the conformity of the soul to 
God developed ; the soul attains to the love which 
is the crown of Christian virtue, and by means of this 
conformity it is enabled to apprehend Him who is love. ft 

* MtyaXrjV yovv elg yvutaiv porrrjv airepiuTraaTOQ Trapk^i Trpoaipicrig. 

("Strom.," II. ii. § 9.) » f Ibid., II. iii. § 11. 

+ To TTiortveiv re icai TrsiQtcOaL scp' rffuv. (Ibid., VII. lii. § 16.) 

§ Ibid., VI. xvii. § 149. 

|| " Qcnrep tojv iroKeiov ra ot'ico^Oju/jjuara. (Ibid., I. i. § 6 ) 

1 " Protrept," XL ** " Strom.," V. iii. § 16. ff Ibid., V. iii. § 7. 

36 



554 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

" God is love ; He gives Himself to those who love Him. 
The soul must be joined to Him by divine love."* 
Over the temple of truth, as over the temple of Epi- 
daurus, might be read an inscription in these words : 
" He who would enter this sanctuary must be pure." All 
the steps of knowledge are ascended in the same manner. 
" Love, in man, blends with love in God, and in this 
love perfect unity is established between him who 
knows and him who is known. "t Having reached this 
point, we have attained to the vision of spirit by spirit. J 
We are bound by faith to the truth, as by the song of 
a sacred syren, from which we cannot free our soul.§ 
By faith we arrive at comprehension and systematic 
knowledge. Christian theology grows out of elementary 
faith, as a ' noble tree springs from the acorn sown in 
the earth, for the faith of the humble-hearted, so far 
from laying a restraint upon the free exercise of thought, 
raises the mind to the luminous heights, from whence this 
world and another are beheld as one grand and august 
whole. We shall see, when we come to give the views 
of Clement on theology, properly so called, in the expo- 
sition of his dogmatic system, that the lowliness of the 
starting-point in no way hindered the free and bold 
development of his thoughts. So far from establishing 
a marked opposition between reason and faith, he re- 
gards both as different manifestations of one and the 
same intellectual and moral power, as is proved by the 
following passage : " Wisdom changes its name accord- 
ing to its diversified applications. || When it deals with 

* Xpj) eZouceiovvQai I'lfiagai'TtpSi aya7ri]Q rijg O^ffQ. ("Strom.," V. 1. § 13.) 
f 'Ev9kv8s rjds 6i\ov fiXio to yiyvCjaizov Tip ■yiyvu)Gi:o}ikvifi TrapiTTrjiriv. 
(Ibid., VII. x. § 57 ) 
% T(p vip bp$ to. vor]Ta. (Ibid., V. iii. § 16.) § Ibid., II. ii. § 9. 
|| Uo\vfj.(piig St ovaa // <ppovr}oig /xerafSccXXti ty\v Trpoarjyopiav. (Ibid., V. 

xvii. § 155.) 



BOOK III.— THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 555 

first causes it is called intelligence; it becomes science 
when it reinforces intelligence by logic ; and it becomes 
faith when, concentrated upon divine things, it appre- 
hends the primeval Word, without yet beholding Him 
face to face, and while still remaining under the 
ordinary conditions of the human mind." 

The demonstration of Christianity on the ground of 
the fundamental principle laid down by Clement, is 
very brief, and requires no great array of logical argu- 
ment. When it is once granted that religious truth is 
perceived by' faith, that is to say, by the direct intuition 
of the soul, of what avail are lengthened arguments D 
Clement would be untrue to his owm. principle, and 
would abandon his own method, were he to make use 
of such. The course to be pursued is not so much to 
give demonstration of the truth as to set it forth, to pre- 
sent it to the soul and the conscience, that it may 
appeal to the divine element which is in man, and 
influence his will. Light will spring, as it were, from 
the contact of the divine within and the divine without 
and above him ; evidence will result from the conjunc- 
tion of the inner truth, which is fragmentary and partial, 
with the whole truth, which the Gospel presents to 
man. Religious certainty is, in short, simply the 
response of the Word to the Word ; the Word within, 
beholding itself revealed in all its fulness and glory in 
Jesus Christ. The task of the apologist will therefore 
be accomplished when he has fully set forth the per- 
son of the Redeemer, and established that He was, 
indeed, the Desire of all nations, the object of universal 
aspiration, if his simple and telling statements make 
it plain that the soul of man, in all its higher instincts, 
cries aloud for Him, and in Him alone finds the satis- 
faction of its purest and best desires, the demonstration 



55^ THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

will be complete. It will be irresistible, at least to the 
upright and honest heart, which, instead of loving the 
darkness because its deeds are evil and must needs be 
hidden in obscurity, comes to the light. Thus is wisdom 
justified of her children, and those alone arrive at truth 
who are of the truth, or rather, who have allowed grace 
to quicken within them this divine relationship. We 
admit this is reasoning in a circle, since to those only 
is the proof conclusive, who were in a measure convinced 
before ; but the whole of Christianity moves in such a 
circle. We shall be slow in reproaching Clement with 
treading, in this respect, in the footsteps of St. Paul, 
St. John, and of Christ Himself. 

It follows from these considerations that the great 
task of the apologist is to place man face to face with 
truth ; his pleading will be simply a powerful affirma- 
tion, for the confirmation of which he will appeal to 
the universal and spontaneous testimony of the human 
conscience. The basis of his apology being once firmly 
laid down, Clement has but two things to do. He will 
first declare the revelation of God, or rather set before 
his contemporaries the living person of Christ ; then 
he will show, by the history of the ancient world, that 
in Him is to be found the realisation of the religious 
ideal, vainly sought through so many ages. 

Clement appeals perpetually to the Holy Scriptures, 
in evidence of the divine truth which he proposes 
for the acceptance of the heart. He does not, indeed, 
cite the adversaries of Christianity before a tribunal of 
which they do not recognise the authority ; he does not 
say to the Greek, who has no faith in the book of God, 
" Bow thy reason before these sacred pages." He does 
not proclaim in an oracular tone, " It is written ! " Nor 
does he seek to compel implicit submission by insisting 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 557 

on the miraculous character of the Scriptures, on the 
fulfilment of prophecy, or on the miracles wrought by 
the inspired writers. This would be to carry the wit- 
ness of the higher and invisible sphere into the lower 
sphere of the visible ; it would be to abandon moral 
intuitions, and to deprive conviction of its character of 
an act of obedience and submission to God. Such 
evidences may carry the mind along with them, but 
they have no decisive power over it, so fertile is the 
intellect in sophistries, and so skilful in evading the 
force of argument. In any case such proofs have no 
power over the heart ; they may sometimes produce a 
cold and dead conviction ; they will never give assur- 
ance and certainty. Men believe in the Bible in the 
same way in which they believe in God, whose word it 
is ; the divine element, which shines forth in its sacred 
pages, must be apprehended by the moral intuition, not 
by the mere intellect. 

These are clearly the views of Clement with refer- 
ence to Scripture evidence. First principles, he repeats 
over and over again, are beyond the reach of reasoning ; 
they must be perceived by direct intuition, that is, by 
faith. Now, the basis of religious truth is the Word 
speaking by His prophets, evangelists, and holy apos- 
tles. The divinity of the Scripture message must, 
therefore, be placed among those first principles which 
are above demonstration, and which must be arrived at 
directly ; the soul believes in it by impulse and by 
instinct, as it believes in the Word, of whose thoughts 
the sacred books are the expression, and whose gracious 
voice they in a manner bring to the ear of man.* In 

* "E\o/xiv yap rrjv dpx^v rrjg SiSamcaXiag tov Kvpiov Sid twv 7rpo^>r]TO)V 
Sid re tov evayyiXiov /cat Sid rwv naicapiojv dTrooroXwv. (" Strom.," VII. 
xvi. § 95.) 



55§ THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

other words, the Scriptures do not lead to Christ, but 
Christ leads to the Scriptures. It is because He speaks 
in them, and we recognise His gentle accents, that 
they are invested for us with the highest authority, and 
become our universal criterion of truth. He who by 
the inner sense has heard the voice of God in these 
sacred pages, believes in them with a settled faith, which 
nothing can overthrow.* What is, then, the course to 
be pursued to convince men of the divinity of the Scrip- 
tures ? There is but one thing needful — that their 
eyes be opened ; the pure in heart will then behold God 
in His word. Clement does not appeal to any of the 
passages quoted from the Scriptures as to an oracle 
conclusive in every dispute with the unbelieving. He 
is anxious rather to essay the power of the Holy Book 
over the hearts of his adversaries, and he repeats in their 
hearing those sacred words, which, " outwardly simple 
and unadorned, are yet full of an inner beauty, which 
are incapable of flattering, and yet raise the man whose 
moral being is choked with sin, heal his wickedness 
with one sovereign word, and draw him towards the 
salvation offered to him." t The apologist quotes by 
preference the Gospel precepts, which set before us so 
lofty a moral ideal, because he is sure beforehand that 
conscience will give its assent to such words as these : 
"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;" "Who- 
soever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath 
committed adultery already with her in his heart." 
He thus sums up the whole teaching of Scripture: 
" Hear what saith the mouth of the Lord, the Holy 
Spirit: 'My son, despise not thou the chastening of the 

* '0 TTWTivaaq roivvv Talc, ypcujxxie, ccTrodei^iv avavripprjrov rrjv rov rag 
ypcupag 5eSojpT]/jLsvov <pujvi)v \an$avu Qtov. (" Strom./' II. ii. § 9.) 

f Miq, teal ry avry (puvy 7ro\Ad Qepenrtvovaai. (" Protrept.," VIII. JJ.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 559 

Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him.' What 
great love has He not shown for mankind ! The 
Heavenly Teacher speaks to you as His disciples ; the 
Master speaks to you not as to servants, not as a God 
to men, but as a tender father addressing his children. 
Moses said, when he only heard the Word 
spoken of, ' I tremble exceedingly, and quake,' and you 
who hear the Word Himself speak, shall you not 
tremble ? . . . Come, my sons, He saith, if you 
become not as little children, if you are not born again, 
the Scripture tells you, ye cannot come back to your 
true Father.* Faith will introduce you, experience 
will be your guide, and thus you will enter the school 
of Scripture. Its teachings are for those who have 
already received in simplicity the question, What man 
is he that desireth life ? " t 

It is faith in the Word, then, which brings us into 
submission under the sacred yoke of the Scriptures. 
It is not the authority of the Book which brings us to 
the feet of Christ ; but the Book, overflowing with the 
life of the Word, imparts that life to us, when by the 
moral intuition we have heard the voice of God in His 
inspired pages, and this initial act of faith has been 
confirmed by experience. To use a rude but exact 
simile, all the value of the vessel comes from that 
which it holds, and if Clement is clear in his faith in 
inspiration, he never, as we shall presently see, con- 
founds revelation itself with the writings which contain 
it ; he perpetually carries us back from the Book to the 
living person of the Redeemer. Everything centres in 
the God-Man, and Clement, in strains of truly noble lan- 

* " Protrept.," IX. 82. 

f 'H Tcia-ic tioa&i, 77 Treipa dida'£ti, r) ypcHprj TratcayioyrjcEi. (Ibid., 
IX. 88.) 



560 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

guage, seeks to make us directly acquainted with Him. 
"This eternal Jesus," he says, " this great and sole High- 
priest of the one God who is His Father, prays for all 
men, and upon earth He ceases not to exhort them. ' O, 
all ye nations, hearken unto me !' He cries. ' Whoso- 
ever you are, endowed with reason, Greeks or barbarians, 
hearken. My words are to that whole race of man 
whom I created by the will of the Father. Come unto 
me, and take upon you the law of the one God and of 
His word. Be not content to be distinguished from 
other creatures by reason alone ; to you only of beings 
of mortal birth do I give immortality. I wait, yea, I 
wait to impart to you this precious gift ; of my bounte- 
ousness I will bestow on you an incorruptible life. I 
give unto you the Word, that is to say, the knowledge 
of God ; I give myself to you.* I am verily that Word, 
the chosen of God, the steward of the Father, the 
Eternal Son, the Anointed One, the mind of God, His 
arm, His might, His will. You even now reflect my 
glory, though dimly and partially. Now I come to re- 
form you in mine image, that you may be like unto 
me. I will anoint you with the precious ointment of 
faith, and by its virtue you shall not see corruption. I 
will show you without a veil the image of righteous- 
ness, that you may rise to God. ' All ye that are 
weary and heavy laden, come unto me, and I will give 
you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; 
for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find 
rest unto your souls.' "t Clement reproduces the 
same thoughts in an inexhaustible variety of forms, 
but always clothed in brilliant and subtle language, 
full of erudite allusions, as is his wont. He is 
never weary of representing the Word in His double 
* TiXeiQv luavrbv xapiZofiai. (" Protrept.," XII. 120.) f Ibid. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 561 

office of Creator and Saviour, depositing in man the 
germ of the whole higher life, and Himself coming to 
quicken and fertilise this germ, when it was on the 
verge of losing all vitality. True to the generous prin- 
ciples of his apology, he rests satisfied with stating and 
presenting these great truths to the soul, well assured 
that if the soul is upright, and has preserved its sense 
of the divine, it will apprehend them by faith, and 
appropriate them by a direct intuition. 

In order to facilitate this appropriation, however, 
Clement seeks to show from history that the revelation 
of the Word does truly answer all the aspirations of 
humanity, as they have manifested themselves in the 
high culture of antiquity. He no longer seeks to esta- 
blish only the relationship of man to God ; he seeks to 
show further, that Jesus Christ has been the Desire of 
all nations. If he finds that mankind in general has 
sought, pursued, demanded, just that which revelation 
brings to him, this will be an unanswerable proof that 
the Gospel is indeed the truth — that truth the pre- 
sentiment or germ of which exists originally in the 
conscience. Deeply convinced that God (to use one of 
Clement's favourite expressions) loves not a mere frac- 
tion of humanity, but human nature in itself, Clement 
delights to trace the progress of preparation for the 
Gospel in the midst of paganism. He does not, 
indeed, place Judaism and Hellenism on a par. We 
have seen him in his polemics against the philosophers, 
bringing down the pride of Greece in comparing her 
with nations whom she accounted barbarous ; we have 
seen how he even accuses her of plagiarism, and of 
borrowing from foreign sources the best fruits of her 
civilisation. On the other hand, he recognises a spon- 
taneous development of the conscience among pagan 



562 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

nations, while still maintaining the superiority of the 
people, who, in lieu of philosophers, had prophets, and 
to whom were committed the oracles of God. Clement 
had not the occasion of holding discussions with the 
Jews ; with them, therefore, he concerns himself very 
little. He is the apologist of the Gentiles, the apostle 
of cultivated Greece, and he pleads the cause of Christ 
before an ideal Areopagus, on which are seated as 
judges all the great philosophers of antiquity. He 
speaks their language, he meets them on their own 
ground of religious and moral development, that he 
may lead them into the whole truth. Thus he is much 
more engaged with the preparation for the Gospel in 
paganism than in Hebrew prophecy, for which, never- 
theless, he always manifests the deepest respect. He 
has represented, by a beautiful image, the idea of the 
preparatory mission of the Greek philosophy, and at 
the same time, of its inferiority to the Hebraic revela- 
tion. He says : " As the holy oil flowed from the beard 
of Aaron down to the skirts of his garments, so the 
divine unction of the truth which the Word — our 
eternal High-priest — poured, first of all, upon the 
head of the chosen people, flows even down to the 
philosophy of the Greeks. That philosophy was 
doubtless a far fainter expression of the Word than 
was prophecy, but by all its elements of truth it 
belongs to that Word. How can we doubt that it is 
fulfilling His designs,* since it contributes to the pre- 
paration for His kingdom ; under this condition, how- 
ever, that it shall not be too proud to receive from a 
barbarous people that wisdom which is to guide it into 
all truth." The philosophic faculty, like all the facul- 
ties of the human mind, is a gift of God bestowed by a 
* $i\o(To<f>ia Sk 7ru>£ ovk Iv XSyy; (" Strom," VI. xvii. § 153.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 563 

special operation of His providence.* He who made 
the prophets made the philosophers also ; His merciful 
wisdom manifests itself in ways infinitely various, but 
which all tend to the salvation of man.t All that the 
arts contain of good proceeds from God. J How, then, 
should this art of philosophy, which is the noblest of 
all, since it directly serves the cause of truth, have 
another origin ? God has not only bestowed the philo- 
sophic faculty, but He has also watched over its exer- 
cise^ He has taken care that the philosophers should 
make good use of it, and thus contribute to the welfare 
and salvation of mankind. His watchful providence is 
specially over those elect spirits who, by their high 
endowments, will exert the greatest influence over their 
kind. These are the leaders of the people, the formers 
of mind, whose vocation it is to make manifest the 
beneficent operation of God in the government or in 
the instruction of the world. Let it not be said that 
philosophy is a demoniacal invention. || Evil cannot 
bring forth good ; darkness cannot produce light ; phi- 
losophy which has been a fountain of good cannot be of 
the Evil One, but is of God.*[[ If we except the sophists, 
who have profaned the name of philosophy, it will be 
admitted that its representatives have been the mcst 

* "E^;o?;(Ti ti oiKtiov Qvaeiog iSiiofia ol ao(poi tjj Siavoia, \a.fij3avovcn ce 
irvi.vj.ia alc9i'jU£o)Q irapa rijg KvpioJTcirijg, ccxpiag. ("Strom.," I. iv. 

§ 26 -K , , , , 

f T77V Gocpiav rov Oeou 7ro\v/j,fpuJg icai 7ro\vTpo7rojg . . . cia eiriG-Tifxrjc, 
did 7rpo(pi}T£iag, rrjv tavrrjg evSsLKVVfxsvjjv dvvap.iv eig tt\v rjfitripav avipye- 
aiav. (Ibid., I. iv. § 27.) 

% Td iv rexvaig dyaOd, OsoOev t'xa rrjv dp\r\v. (Ibid., VI. xvii. § 160.) 

§ Ibid., VI. xvii. § 157. 

]! MdXiora rovroig vvveaTi TrpoaixwTtpa 1) iiriaKOT-rj, ocroi Svvaroi rd 
ir\i\Qri avviiHpikiiv vTrdpxoveiv qvtoi d' daiv 01 rjyspoviKoi icai iraidiVTitcoi, 

(Ibid., VI. xvii. § 158.) 

IT Ov roivvv Kcuciag epyov t) <pi\o<ro<pia ivapstovg Troiovaa. (Ibid., 
VI. xvii. § 159.) 



564 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

virtuous men of Greece and Rome.* Let us not then 
suffer it to be likened to the strange woman in the Pro- 
verbs, who lays snares for the feet of the young, and whose 
dwelling leads down to death. No ; philosophy is no har- 
lot ; t it is with her as with Tamar, who, though she was 
arraved like a vile woman, and might be mistaken for 
such, nevertheless truly belonged to the house of. Israel.^ 
This great apology, then, starting from the essential 
affinity between man and God, goes on to show how, in 
Christianity, we have the complete restoration of the 
normal relation between the creature and the Creator. 
It finds in the divine element, which, partial and 
obscured, survives the fall in man, the fulcrum with 
which to raise us to that fulness of the Deity to which 
we *are destined, and which the Word has come to 
impart. Inexorable in its declaration of the corruption 
of fallen man, but as tender as inexorable, it never 
takes pleasure in degrading human nature, and finds 
no cause of triumph in its deep abasement. It needs 
and cherishes the feeble spark in the smoking flax, and 
respects in the bruised reed a divine plant which may 
be raised, which must not be broken. We are not 
blind to the blemishes in Clement's apology. We note 
his inconsistencies, we blame his excessive idealism, 
and among minor faults we observe the singular turn 
of his phraseology, that combination of too great bril- 
liance in the form with obscurity in the thought, which 
makes his treatises difficult to read. Of him we may 
say, what is true of philosophy in general : to taste the 
sweet kernel, it is needful to break the shell. Our 
readers can form very little idea of the confusion to be 

'■' 'H xprfaig tt)Q (piXocroQiac;, ovic lariv civ KaicHv, aW i\ to~iq dpioruig 
rwv 'EWrjvwv Sedorai. (" Strom.," VI. xvii. § 159 ) 

t Ibid., I.v. § 29. t Ibid., I. vi. §31. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 565 

met with in his writings, because we have only quoted 
some of his finest passages, without following him 
through the many involutions of his style. Yet, in 
spite of all these grave defects, Clement is the true 
founder of the great apology, that which is sure and safe 
in its conclusions, because it gives truth a basis wide 
enough to build upon, and supplies the fulcrum for 
the lever. That which was only a passing flash of 
genius in Justin, becomes, under the hands of Clement, 
the organising principle of a great system. Certainty 
in religion is made to rest upon the normal conditions 
of all certainty ; it is based upon a real relation be- 
tween man and truth ; this relation is determined by the 
very value of the object of faith. Now, as this object 
is God, the Cause of causes, it is legitimate that it 
should be apprehended, like every first cause, by moral 
intuition. It is rational that reason should recognise 
its own limits, and leave to the intuitive faculties and 
moral determinations, the perception of super-sensible 
and divine truths. By doing this it loses nothing, 
for within its own sphere it has a very important 
mission ; it is the lawgiver of the world of thought. 
Starting from these premises, Clement of Alexandria, 
by an erudite and able course of argument, refutes all 
that has opposed itself to Christianity in the past, and 
discerns all that in the old world was in harmony with 
the new. Thus he establishes the truth of the new 
religion by its conformity with the divine element in 
human nature. His great original ideas are sustained 
by a mass of learning ; they glow always with the fire 
of love to God and man, and are illuminated by the 
sometimes excessive play of a brilliant imagination. 
The current of ideas which Clement set in motion was 
too pure, too spiritual for his age ; and after the time 



566 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of his illustrious successor, the stream was to lose itself 
among the waste sands of external authority, and never 
to be seen again in its pristine transparency till the 
days of Pascal. But before thus disappearing for a 
time, it was, under the guidance of Origen, to flow on- 
wards in a fuller stream and in a more steady and 
defined course. In his teaching, instead of an exposi- 
tion broken by constant digressions, we have a chain of 
close and continuous argument ; instead of the thousand 
intertwining, crossing threads of a variegated fabric, we 
have one clear and telling line of thought. It is only 
just to Clement to admit, before we part from him, that 
he had not the advantage of being engaged in conflict 
with a skilful opponent, and that he was not perpe- 
tually recalled to his subject by a keen and watchful 
adversary. Nor must we forget that it is more easy to 
perfect a method than to invent it, to draw conclusions 
than to lay down principles. Men grope with doubtful 
steps along a dark and untried way, but a special glory 
ever belongs to the pioneer, and this glory, beyond 
question, is Clement's. 

(c.) The Apologies of Origen, of Hippolytus, and of 
Minutius Felix briefly epitomised. 

Origen accepts the great principles of the Apology of 
Clement ; he regards them as already demonstrated, and 
contents himself with simply affirming them. Thus he 
establishes with equal clearness the essential relation 
between man and God, the universal operation of grace 
upon the race of Adam, the preparation made for the 
Gospel in paganism itself, and the determining power 
of the will in the formation of religious beliefs. In an ad- 
mirable passage he says : " The Divine Word slumbers 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 567 

in the hearts of the unbelievers, while it is awake in the 
saints. It slumbers, but is not the less really present, 
as Jesus Christ was in the ship with His disciples, 
when they were tossing in terror on the stormy sea. 
It will awake so soon as the soul, become anxious for 
salvation, shall call, and then immediately there will be 
a great calm.* In other words, the Son of God is not a 
stranger to man ; all of the divine that remains in our 
soul testifies to His presence within us ; but the Word 
within slumbers until it is aroused by an earnest desire 
after salvation and by an act of the will." We shall 
constantly find these grand ideas at the basis of the 
demonstration which Origen gives of Christianity; they 
have not, in his treatment, the same freshness as in the 
writings of his predecessors, but he has turned them to 
so good account, and presented them with so much 
amplitude, that although he did not originate the 
method he employs, he deserves to be entitled the 
foremost of the apologists of the Alexandrine school. 
He shed light upon more than one obscure point, and 
treated in a masterly manner the relation of external 
and internal evidence. We shall find him always taking 
his stand on moral grounds in the conflict with the 
foes of Christianity ; there he resolutely remained, and 
his peculiar tactics consisted in compelling his adver- 
saries to meet him on this arena. 

Restrictions of space oblige us to pass over the very 
full and interesting reply made by Origen to the objec- 
tions urged by Celsus from the Judaistic standpoint. 
He would not be entangled in the network of rabbinical 

* "Adhuc in infidelibus dormitat sermo divinus ; vigilat in 
Sanctis. Dormitat in his qui tempestatibus fluctuant, suscitatur 
vero eorum vocibus qui cupiunt vigilante sponso salvari." (Origen 
"In Cantic," Homily II. 9.) 



568 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

quibbles. "Would to God," he exclaims, "that these 
calumniators of the Word, who are ignorant of the 
most essential truths, were also ignorant of the very 
letter of the Scriptures, that they might not be able to 
render their attacks so plausible, and to shake, I say 
not the faith, but the little faith of feeble believers ! " 
Origen hastens to lead his adversaries into the moral 
sphere, that there he may vindicate even in their view 
the reproach of the cross. Regarded from this stand- 
point, the crucifixion of Christ appears as a free sacri- 
fice, no longer as a death of shame. If there is found 
some opponent of soul so base, as still to see a brand 
of dishonour in this voluntary offering of the infinite 
charity of a God, Origen appeals from such objection 
not to texts of Scripture, but to the living book of the 
soul, to its noble instincts, to that spontaneous recog- 
nition which conscience gives to every act of self 
devotion. When the spotless victim of Calvary shall 
be blamed by the common consent of mankind, in that 
same day men will cease to admire Socrates, who 
would drink death rather than save himself by a lie, or 
Leonidas marching joyfully to a certain and premature 
grave for the salvation of his country.* 

The apologist is equally happy whether adopting the 
calm tone of philosophical discussion, or speaking in 
the more vehement accents of righteous indignation. 
He feels that the light which is to carry conviction 
to the incredulous Jew must flash fire, for till Pharisaic 
pride has been humbled in the dust, like Saul of Tarsus 
on the way to Damascus, it will effectually bar the 
access to truth. Origen, therefore, rebuked the pride 
of Judaism in his most powerful accents. Following 
the example of Stephen in his address to the Sanhe- 
* "Contra Celsum," II. 17. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 569 

drim, he connected the present unbelief of the Jews 
with their unbelief in the past. They are ever the 
same stiff-necked people, hardened in rebellion. They 
smile contemptuously now when we speak to them of 
the God who came to dwell among them ; but was not 
this same God present in olden time in the midst of 
the Hebrews, when He led them, with a stretched-out 
arm and with many signs and wonders, out of Egypt, 
when He smote the waters of the Red Sea that they 
might pass over on dry land, when He walked with 
them in the cloudy pillar, and most of all when He 
proclaimed His law from Sinai? and yet those who 
thus in a manner beheld Him with open vision, be- 
lieved not in Him,* else they would not have fashioned 
a senseless idol at the very foot of the sacred mount. 
"And the race is ever the same; what signs and 
miracles did not God show them in the wilderness, but 
they continued still in unbelief. And now, neither the 
marvellous appearing of Christ, nor His words of 
authority, nor His miracles wrought before all the 
people, could persuade them to believe in Him.t Their 
present unbelief is in strict accordance with all that 
their own books tell of their want of faith in the past. 
Which miracles, think you, are the greater, those 
wrought in Egypt and in the desert, or those of Christ ? 
If you give the preference to the former, must it not be 
easy to comprehend that the people who resisted the 
greater miracles should also resist the less ? If you 
place both on the same level, is it astonishing if the 
same people should show themselves equally incredu- 
lous in view of the miracles, which are at the basis of 
both covenants ? .... In rejecting Jesus Christ, 

* 'R7ri<TTi]9r) v-b tCjv ddoTuv. (" Contra Celsum," II. 74.) 
f Ibid. 

37 



570 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

you bear witness against yourselves that you are the 
worthy sons of those who in the wilderness withstood 
the clearest manifestations of the divine power."* The 
unbelief of the Jews is far more culpable than that of 
the pagans. We may not marvel, then, if their punish- 
ment has been heavier than that of the proconsul, who, 
at their instigation, condemned Chrfst. Pilate would 
have deserved to be torn limb from limb, like Pentheus, 
say our adversaries, if Christ had been really God. 
But the true Pentheus is not the Roman judge, but the 
nation which slew its God, and whose living members 
have been, as the due meed of this crime, scattered in 
fragments over the whole surface of the earth, thus en- 
during a punishment more terrible and more lasting than 
that which, according to the fable, was visited on the 
enemy of Bacchus. t The unbelief of the Jews has 
drawn down upon them the most fearful calamities. 
The time of their chastisement has not tarried, it has 
already come. What nation has been thus driven from 
its capital and from the country where it held its 
national worship ? The cause of this unparalleled 
catastrophe is their crime against Christ. :£ But their 
condemnation has been the occasion of a large blessing; 
it has cast down the barrier between the truth and 
mankind, and the good news of salvation is spreading 
over the earth like long pent-up waters, which have at 
length found a free outlet. § It is for this purpose the 
whole world has been brought together under the laws 
of the Roman emperor, for a multiplicity of kingdoms 

* MaprvpHTS dl wv t<{> 'Ir^aov airiGT&Tt, on v'toi i<rrs rcov iv r-g Ipijpip 
&7T'(jTr)<javr(juv tcuq Qiiaig e-n-KpavdaLQ. (" Contra Celsum," II. 75.) 
*j- 'Yirtp tuv TlevQkojQ G7rapaynbv Siainrapiv. (Ibid., II. 34) 
J Ibid., II. 8. 
§ SvvsxpifoaTO Tij dTTUTTiq. twv 'lovSaicov TtpoQ rt)v kXtjoiv r&v i6va>v. 

(Ibid., IL78.) 






BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 571 

would have hindered the diffusion of the doctrine of 
Christ throughout the entire universe.* 

Origen, after thus verifying the obduracy of the syna- 
gogue, turns to the pagans, saying, in the noble words 
of St. Paul : " God hath opened to us the door of the 
Gentiles." In this more closely philosophical argu- 
ment he uses the same kind of reasoning which had 
proved so victorious in the case of the Jews ; but while 
thus analogous in substance, we shall find it admirably 
adapted in form to the new adversaries he is desirous 
to vanquish and convince. 

Origen commences by establishing the historic 
claims of the Old Testament in opposition to the mock- 
ing impeachments of Celsus. Then he refutes the 
objections which were aimed rather at the person of 
the Christians than at their doctrine. He shows that 
they are neither impertinent innovators nor rebels. 
He dwells upon their heroic courage under persecution. 
How can those men be accused of cowardice, who fear 
nothing but the judgment of God ? It is asserted and 
maintained that they are the scum of the earth. Away 
with such delusions ! These unhappy men, whom their 
fellows regard as the rejected of heaven, are in very 
truth the hidden prop of the world, which owes its 
preservation to their prayers ; they are the ten righteous 
in Sodom. They are the preserving salt of the earth, t 
and the earth will stand only so long as this salt 
retains its savour. Christians are subject to persecu- 
tions only in the measure which God is pleased to 
permit. When He sees fit to stay the fire and sword, 
the disciples of Christ may go forward, safe and sound, 
amidst the raging malice and hatred of a world, well 
sustained by Him who said: " Be of good cheer; I 
* " Contra Celsum," II. 30. f Ibid., VIII. 70. 



572 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY 

have overcome the world." He has, in truth, over- 
come it, and the world has no more power than that 
which its victors may be pleased yet for a time to grant 
to it. Our confidence is in that victory.* If God 
sends us forth to fight the battles of the faith, we will 
march boldly to meet our enemies, crying: " I can do 
all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." 
" The very hairs of our head are all numbered." Be- 
side, affliction is in reality a blessing to the Christian ; 
it proves his faith and ripens him for heaven. If the 
Church is reproached with the obscurity and low estate 
of most of its members, the apologist replies, with the 
eloquence of love, that the highest glory of the new 
religion is,«that it has been mindful of those who had 
no earthly heritage. It is not that the Church rejects 
the wise and well-informed, and favours ignorance ; on 
the contrary, she fully recognises that knowledge is a 
valuable preliminary leading on to truth, t but she seeks 
to diffuse her benefits equally among all the children of 
men. "We openly avow that we desire to instruct every 
human being in the knowledge of God. We desire to 
offer to the young woman the exhortation befitting her 
age and condition ; we desire -to teach the slave how, if 
he becomes free in spirit, he will be the free man of our 
religion. We hold ourselves debtors to the learned and 
to the unlearned. We thus act that we may bring 
healing to every soul endowed with reason, and restore 
it to the fellowship of God. J We refuse no one, not 
the most untutored man, or vile slave, or ignorant 
woman or child ; we accept all that we may better all.§ 

* Qappovjitv ry Ikuvov vky. ("Contra Celsum," VIII. 70.) 

•f* To ^povifxov tivai icaXov ianv. (Ibid., III. 50.) 

X Ibid., III. 54 

§ Toirovg KaXei 6 \6yog, 'iva aurovg (3i\rnbcry. (Ibid., III. 49.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 573 

The brigand is not shut out; if we bid him to our 
company it is not as robbers welcoming another to 
their band, it is that we may bind up the wounds of his 
spirit with the truth, and pour into them the healing 
balm of the Word, which is more effectual than wine 
and oil." * After all, the end of all proselytism worthy 
of the name is to impart true knowledge to the igno- 
rant ; this has been ever the vocation of philosophy. 
What occasion, then, is there to blame the Christian, 
who, like a good physician, seeks out the sick that 
he may heal them, and the weak' and weary that he 
may renew their strength ?t Further, though it is 
true that great sinners are not excluded from the 
Church, but on the contrary are bidden to come in, 
they are yet in the minority, for the new religion 
gathers its most numerous adherents among men of 
noble hearts, who love goodness and truth. \ Never- 
theless, it turns with tender compassion towards all 
who need its help, be they who they may. "I admit, 
then, that I seek out even the lowest of mankind to 
render them as much better as I can ; but it is false 
that these outcasts alone constitute the Christian 
Church. My preference is naturally for those quick 
and intelligent spirits which can grasp the hidden 
meaning of the law, the prophets, and the Gospels." § 
In other words, Christianity carries light to every grade 
of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest. 

Pagan philosophy, after vituperating against the 
proselytism of the Church, directed its attacks against 
the first missionaries of the new religion. These it 
compared to designing persons of a low class, luring 

* " Contra Celsum," III. 61. 

f 'Qc <pi\av9pwxoQ larpog. (Ibid., III. 74.) 

X Ibid., III. 65. § Ibid., III. 56. 



574 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

away young people from the instruction of a venerable 
father and of illustrious masters, to use them for their 
own purposes. " These designing persons," Origen 
replies, " are men who seek by every means to raise 
our souls towards the Author of all things, who teach 
us to tread under foot all that is visible and transitory, 
and to enter into fellowship with God. That which 
we teach these young people, whom we are charged 
with leading astray, is at least as valuable as anything 
they could have learned from those venerable fathers 
and illustrious masters, of whom so loud a boast is 
made. We snatch young girls from a life of immodesty, 
from the obscene dances in the theatres, from debasing 
superstition ; we give the young man that which will act 
as a check upon youthful lusts, revealing to him not 
only the infamy of such pleasures, but also the perils to 
which they expose him, and the chastisements they 
will bring down upon his head." What were those 
beautiful and noble lessons which youth had learned 
from the masters, the loss of whose teaching is so much 
lamented ? The young people had learned to frequent 
theatres and haunts of vice. They were hardened in all 
wickedness. Such teaching was surely not a treasure 
to be so sedulously guarded. Truly philosophical teach- 
ing, Christians are the last to repudiate : on the con- 
trary, they call it to their aid. " We do not turn 
away the young from the study of philosophy ;* rather, 
when we find their minds exercised by the pursuit of 
the preparatory sciences, we endeavour to raise them 
to the sublime heights of the Gospel, which are to the 
many inaccessible. We invite them to receive from 
Christians the philosophy taught by Christ, His pro- 
phets and apostles." Let men beware of magnifying 

* Ouk a.7T0Tpiip(i) cnrb rovruv tovq v'iovq. (" Contra Cdsum," III. 58.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 575 

the greatness of the masters who preceded the Divine 
Teacher, and of representing them to us as skilful phy- 
sicians followed by an ignorant empiric. In fact, if we 
no longer contemplate philosophy in a general manner, 
as a science which imparts positive knowledge and exer- 
cises the mind advantageously in habits of meditation ; 
if we take it now as embodied in its principal systems, 
we must acknowledge that it has furnished mankind 
with but poor physicians, and that there is pressing need 
to remove from their treatment the sick, who are nothing 
bettered, but rather grow worse. Is it not a service 
rendered to a man, to alienate him from the philosophy 
of Epicurus, which denies the gods, or from the Peripa- 
tetic philosophy, which breaks every link between the 
creature and the Creator, and brands faith in Provi- 
dence as arrant superstition ? Is it not a true service, 
to lead him to withdraw his adherence from that proud 
Stoicism, which has failed to invent anything better 
than a material God, and from the idle dreams of 
metempsychosis, taught by the disciples of Pythagoras ? 
In acting thus, we do not remove the sick man from 
his true physicians ; on the contrary, we heal him of 
the wounds which a false philosophy has inflicted on 
his spirit.* Silence, then, to all the slanders brought 
against the defenders of Christianity! It is idle to 
compare Christians to drunken men who would entice 
others into their own sin, or to blind men who would 
have all others as blind as themselves. The intoxi- 
cated man is not the Christian, but the worshipper of 
matter, drunk with lust in the temples of his gods ; the 
blind man is he who, in presence of the great and 
beautiful works of creation, fails to recognise, to admire 

* MtyaXiov Tpavfiarwv, tu>v curb Xoycov vo/j.i%ofxwu>v ^iXoao^uav axciX- 
\da<rofJLtv rovg TreiQoj-dvovQ i\\uv. (" Contra Celsum," III. 75.) 



57^ THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and adore their Author.* The fatal weakness of the 
philosophers consists in this — that they set themselves 
forth as the objects of faith ; they are feeble and 
ignorant as we, and yet each of them ventures to say : 
Believe in me.t For ourselves, we say : Believe in 
the supreme God, the perfect master revealed in Jesus 
Christ. None of us is so mad as to say to those 
whom we teach: I myself will save you. Thus, be- 
tween Christianity and the wisdom of the ancients, 
there is all the difference between a philosophy and 
a religion. 

After these general reflections, Origen enters on the 
positive apology. As far as regards the method of 
Christian teaching, he only reproduces the noble argu- 
ment of Clement in an enriched and perfected form. 
The point to be established is, that Christianity, in 
claiming of us faith, does no violence to the laws of 
rational certainty, as it is accused of doing ; and that 
from the standpoint of true reason, its so-called folly 
is more reasonable than the wisdom of the world. 
Origen points out first of all, that a certain act of faith 
and trust precedes necessarily every great human enter- 
prise of whatever nature. Without such an act of 
faith, no man would start on a voyage, or enter into 
marriage, or bring up children, or entrust the seed- 
corn to the earth, for the result of the undertaking 
must be in all cases doubtful. " If hope and faith in 
the future are the necessary conditions of the continu- 
ance of human life, especially where some uncertainty 
remains as to the results of our activity,! shall not 

* " Contra Celsum," V. 77. 

f Ovce to ifioi Trpocrs'^rf, icai> StddtTKWfisv, <pa/.(8i>. (Ibid., V. 76.) 
I 'Zvvaxst tuv fiiov iv irday -xpa'iu a.dij\<p, omttQ iKfiijfferai, 1) i\7ri£ Kai 
il TriortQ. (Ibid., I. U.J 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 577 

faith appear yet more necessary when we are con- 
templating a venture far more momentous than navi- 
gation, marriage, or seed-sowing ? He in whom we 
have to place our faith is the God who has made all 
things, and who, in the accomplishment of His great 
designs, has Himself submitted to suffering and a 
shameful death, that the truth might have free course 
among men." Again : no one enters a school of 
philosophy, and devotes himself to its high studies, 
unless he previously has confidence in the master he 
has chosen. Thus this very faith with which we are 
upbraided, is the door to the very philosophy which is 
placed in opposition to us. Can it, indeed, be a reason- 
able thing to place confidence in one of the heads of 
the innumerable schools which have been established 
in Greece, and in the midst of the barbarous world, 
and yet not reasonable to believe in the Supreme 
Master, who has proved that He alone merits our 
adoration?* Christianity, then, when it requires faith 
from its adherents, does not in any way take a strange 
and exceptional p osition ; it follows the common rule 
laid down by reason itself. 

This faith also, as we have seen, rests upon a good 
foundation. The Christian has placed his trust in One 
who is supremely worthy of it. So far from interdict- 
ing inquiry, faith courts it : everything in Christianity 
encourages and quickens thought. The most learned 
philosophy does not so stimulate the spirit of inquiry 
as does revelation, by the oracles of its prophets, by 
its symbols and parables. t Christianity fully recognises 

* Hu>g oi>x<- fiaXKov t<$ etti iracn 6e(f Tria-tvstv. (" Contra Celsum/ J 

I. II.), 

•j- Ei/pf0/fcrfrai ical iv rip xpicrrta^tCT/z^ ovk kXarruv, e'^iracng tGjv 7T£7rta« 
rtvixsvwv. (Ibid., I. 9; comp. III. 45-74.) 



57$ THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the superiority of a solidly-established conviction.* 
While the humble Christian, who is not equal to any 
sustained train of logical thought, finds all the argu- 
ment he requires in the Master's word, the Christian 
of larger mental power is bound to seek aids to faith, 
whether in the interpretation of Holy Scripture, or in 
philosophical reasoning. The sacred writings them- 
selves enjoin the use of the rational faculties in 
religion. t When the Apostle Paul calls wisdom folly, 
he is speaking of the wisdom of the world. That 
wisdom is folly because it deals solely with that which 
is sensible ; it believes in matter only, and recognises 
nothing beyond the visible. We have reason then to call 
it folly in spite of its specious arguments. ;{; " On the 
other hand, we call that the wisdom of God, which 
draws our soul away from lower things to set it upon 
the high and blessed God, which teaches us to lightly 
esteem all that is bounded by time and space, and 
to rise to the contemplation of the invisible, of those 
things which eye hath not seen."§ Christianity presents 
itself to us as the highest philosophy. If some of its 
adherents speak otherwise, and boast of their ignorance, 
it is unjust to impute to the Gospel that for which 
these persons alone are answerable. The Christian 
faith is in very truth founded on reason. || Faith is 
in harmony with the universal consciousness of man.li 
The soul, endowed with reason, has but to consult its 

* TIoXX^J SiacpspH purd \6yov Kai ao(piag ovyKaTariQcaQai toiq doy/xaaiv, 
y-rrep pera ipiXijs 7r/err£W£. ("Contra Celsum," I. 13.) 
f Ibid., IV. 9, VI. 11 ; comp. VI. 7.) 
t Ibid-, III. ,47-73-, , 

§ "SiTtevouv em rd dopara /cat gkottuv rd firi f3\e7r6fjieva, ravrd (pijci 
oo<f>iav dvai Gtov. (Ibid., III. 47 ; comp. III. 72.) 

|| Ibid., III. 44. 

U Ta Trjg 7ricr-£ioQ yfxtov tcuq koivcuq ivvolaiQ dpxrflev cvvayoptvovra. 
(Ibid., III. 40.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 579 

own nature, and it will reject the gods it has falsely 
worshipped, and find the native element of its spiritual 
life in its Creator."* Thus even in the folly of the cross 
is maintained that great moral law, that all certainty in 
religious matters must be based on the inherent relation 
between the soul and the truth. Origen is ever mindful 
that religious truth belongs essentially to the realm of 
morals. He asks how that truth can by possibility 
clash with the nature of man, in which God has from 
the beginning engraven His law — a law of holiness, 
which abides for ever as the charter of the universal 
kingdom and of the spiritual community, a law which 
no written legislation can ever nullify or abrogate.! 
Before the prophets and the Saviour taught divine 
lessons to man, God had already written those lessons 
on the fleshy tables of the human heart. J Origen thus 
denies as positively as Clement, the existence of any 
contradiction between faith and knowledge. The one 
leads to the other ; for in this higher region of know- 
ledge, science must necessarily be founded upon faith. 
Let philosophy cease then to speak contemptuously of 
Christian faith, which, so far from stultifying thought, 
lends it wings to rise into the sphere of the divine. 

From the question of the method of Christian teach- 
ing, Origen passes to the treatment of its substance. 
It is not enough to have established that faith rests 
upon examination ; it is needful further to show the 
result of that examination, and to demonstrate that 
the Christian doctrine does actually meet the true needs 
of the soul, and has valid claims on our confidence. 

* $t\rpov dva\afij3dv£i (pvvacov to irpbg rbv KTiaavra. (" Contra 
Celsum," III. 40.) t Ibrd., V. 37. 

I AL07rep ovdev Qavjiaarbv, rbv avrbv 6ebv uirep £oicaZ,e Sid tu>v Trpo^q- 
rStv Kcti tov acoTiipog eyKctrecroapickvai tcux; ditavrdtv dv6pa)7r<i)v v^/v^ao;. 
(Ibid., I. 3 ; comp. VIII. 72.) 



580 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

One of the objections made to the exclusive demands 
of Christianity, was founded on the points of resem- 
blance it presented with the philosophies and religions 
of antiquity. Origen first reduces these analogies to 
their exact value, and then makes use of them as a 
fresh argument in support of the faith. Those who 
controverted the originality of Christianity made it 
their grand endeavour to confound it with Platonism. 
From their representations it would seem that the 
Gospel was but Platonism wrongly construed ; and 
they found more than one specious argument to adduce 
in support of their thesis. The philosophy of Plato 
was, as we have seen, the loftiest flight of ancient 
thought towards the ideal ; in spite of all its errors, 
it gave expression to the sacred aspirations of con- 
science in sublime language, and while it was still 
fatally weighted with the invincible dualism under 
which paganism had succumbed, it at least caught a 
glimpse of truths which it failed either to consecrate 
into a religion, or to disengage from flagrant contra- 
dictions. It was natural that there should be a remark- 
able correspondence between the religion which brought 
these great truths into full and clear light, and the 
philosophy which had helped to prepare the way for 
them. Again : Christianity, taking form in the Greek 
world, could not but use the language of Greece ; and 
that language, in all the expressions of higher thought, 
was deeply imbued with the spirit of Plato. Hence 
arose numerous analogies of expression, which it was 
easy to misconstrue. It was, therefore, of extreme 
importance to vindicate the originality of the Gospel 
in distinction from Platonism. Origen has devoted to 
this important discussion, the greater part of the sixth 
book of his treatise against Celsus. He commences 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 581 

by showing that if on some points the Christians 
coincide with the Platonists ; if they sanction the purer 
notions of the divinity diffused by the Academy ; if they 
also repudiate the gross polytheism of the many ; if 
they approvingly endorse the noble words of Plato on 
the Supreme Good — the spark of which is kindled spon- 
taneously in the human soul ; — they have at least this 
advantage, that they act conformably with these high be- 
liefs, while the philosophers, after all their eloquent dis- 
sertations on the Supreme Good, " go down to the 
Piraeus to worship at the shrine of Diana, to offer prayer 
to her, and to take part in the feast celebrated in her 
honour by an ignorant multitude." After discoursing 
on the soul, and on the blessed reward of virtue, they 
lose sight of these grand truths revealed to them by 
God, debase themselves by beggarly superstitions, 
and sacrifice a cock to Esculapius. :;: It is a false 
assertion that ancient philosophy scorned to seek sup- 
port in prodigies, and placed all its reliance in the 
inherent power of truth. While the miracles of the 
Gospel are simple and sublime, the marvels of pagan 
philosophy are a tissue of idle legends. Who cannot 
call to mind the fables current about the birth of 
Plato and the adventures of Pythagoras ? t If a closer 
scrutiny be made of the thoughts which are common 
to Platonism and to the sacred books of the Christians, 
it will be seen that these truths had been uttered by 
the prophets, ages before the time of the philosopher 
of the Academy, while it is not possible to charge the 
prophets and apostles with having sought and found 
these precious pearls in Greece.^: Lamentable errors 

* 'AXY oi Toravra Trspi rov upCorov ayaBov yoa\Lav~£c rartzfiaivovoiv tie 
Hipaika, Trpoaev^optvoi wg OtoJ Ty AprepiCi. ( M Contra Celsum," VI. 4.) 

t Ibid, VI. 8. I Ibid., VI. 7, 9, 10. 



5S2 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

also are found associated with these sublime ideas, 
even in the writings of the divine Plato ;* and, in any 
case, the grand truths are conveyed in an incomplete 
and obscure form, which mars and veils their true 
beauty. Plato has nobly said " that no poet has ever 
yet sung, nor ever will sing worthily, of the good 
which is higher than the heavens." 

Origen claims our very highest admiration for a 
moderation of thought which always prevents him from 
going to extremes, and for the just measure which he 
retains in all his arguments. Thus he does not allow 
himself to be led into pronouncing a sweeping anathema 
upon the whole culture of the ancients. Satisfied with 
having established the originality and novelty of the 
religion of Christ, he gladly points out the stepping- 
stones towards it in the ancient world, and these 
stepping-stones he discovers not only in the schools of 
the philosophers, but even in the polluted temples of 
paganism. There was nothing to be added to that which 
Clement had so well said upon the high mission of Greek 
philosophy. Origen explicitly acknowledges that all the 
elements of truth contained in it, have a divine source. f 
But he goes further : the most absurd myths are, in his 
view, the confused and disordered expression of the 
aspirations of the human conscience. In all the count- 
less legends which relate to the miraculous birth of 
heroes or eminent sages, he sees a vague presentiment 
of the incarnation. 

Celsus, as we have seen, in his pantheistic mate- 
rialism, delighted to degrade man to the level of the 
brute. Origen, after vindicating the principles of 

* " Contra Celsum," VI. 17. 

| c O 6eog yap auroXg raura teal baa icaXojg XtXeicrai ifav'spioot. (Ibid., 

VI. 3. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 583 

theism, uses his lofty eloquence to exalt the dignity of 
human nature. He says : " A being endowed with 
reason and capable of good, cannot be likened to a 
worm oi the earth. The idea of good, of which he is 
capable, and the indestructible germs of virtue within 
him, forbid such a comparison. Reason, which proceeds 
from the Divine Word, maintains an enduring relation 
between the rational creature and God." * Let it not 
be said that man is lower than the brutes, because his 
natural wants are less easily supplied. This inferiority 
is in reality an advantage, for it stimulates his ac- 
tivity, and God designed thus to call into exercise all 
his powers and capabilities, and to lead him on to the 
practice of all the arts and sciences of civilisation. He 
is invested with a true kingship over the inferior 
creatures. t 

Man must, after all, be always separated from the brute 
by the whole distance which divides instinct from reason 
— the image of God in us.| The world, therefore, was 
made, not for creatures endowed simply with instinct, but 
for those who have the gift of reason. While G$d is not 
angry with monkeys or flies, He chastises men who 
break His law.§ This chastisement is a mark of His 
love and respect for the human creature, and enables us 
to believe that He may move heaven and earth for man's 
salvation. From this point of view, the incarnation 
and humiliation of the Son of God for human redemp- 
tion can be conceived. It was not to augment His own 
glory that the Word came down to earth ; it was that 
by shedding abroad His light in our hearts, and draw- 
ing us by intimate association to Himself, He might 

* Ouk 4$. to XoyiKov %<x)ov rravry aWorpiov voniaQijvai Oeov. (" Contra 
Celsum," IV. 25.) t Ibid., V. 78. 

I Ehcojv rov Otov 6 \6yoQ. (Ibid., IV. 85.) § Ibid., IV. 98. 



584 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

bring us back to God.* Was not that very humiliation 
itself the sacrifice of redeeming love ? 

While recognising the necessity of miracles, Origen 
does not make these the grand support of his apology, 
which rests entirely on moral grounds. He brings out 
in an admirable manner the difference between Chris- 
tian miracles and magic. " Show me the magician who 
calls upon the spectators of his prodigies to reform 
their life, or who teaches his admirers the fear of God, 
and seeks to persuade them to act as those who must 
appear before Him as their judge ? The magicians do 
nothing of the sort, either because they are incapable 
of it or because they have no such'desire. Themselves 
charged with crimes the most shameful and infamous, 
how should they attempt the reformation of the morals 
of others ? The miracles of Christ, on the contrary, 
all bear the impress of His own holiness, and He ever 
uses them as the means of winning to the cause of 
goodness and truth those who witnessed them. Thus 
He presented His own life as the perfect model, not 
only to Mis immediate disciples but to all men. He 
taught His disciples to make known to those that 
heard them, the perfect will of God ; and He revealed 
to mankind, far more by His life and words than by His 
miracles, f the secret of that holiness by which it is 
possible in all things to please God. If such was 
the life of Jesus, how can He be compared to mere 
charlatans, and why may we not believe that He 
was indeed God manifested in the flesh, for the salva- 
tion of our race ? " Origen brings his moral demon- 
stration to a climax by appealing to the life of the 

* « Contra Celsum," IV. 6. 

*}* IlXsov 6ica\9ivTEQ airb tov Xoyov Kal rjOovg r\ a.7ro ru>v irapadoZuiV wff 
Xpi) fiiovv. (Ibid., I. 68.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 585 

Christians, to their glorious triumphs over sin and 
persecution. 

We have thus briefly sketched this great apology, 
placing it before us in more regular order than we find it 
in his book, but retaining all its characteristic features. 
He replied to the principal objections of his adversaries, 
not only by refuting them on their own ground, but also 
by meeting them with views broader, truer, higher than 
any they had advanced. He followed the Jew on to the 
arena of rabbinical exegesis ; he confounded him from 
the very text of Scripture, proving that he was unfaithful 
to his own revelation, and that if he had listened to 
Moses and the prophets, they would have led him to 
the foot of the cross. His vigorous reasoning broke the 
dialectic network in which pagan philosophy sought to 
ensnare him ; he nobly vindicated the Christians from 
all the base calumnies current in the muddy stream of 
popular superstition. The apologist showed that this 
herd of obscure individuals, among whom the slave and 
the brigand found a ready place, was in truth the 
Church of the living God, the hidden prop of the world, 
which is upheld and continued only for its sake ; he 
marked in these proscribed men the dignity of conscience, 
daring to rebel against human precepts in obedience 
to a higher law, and he pointed to the novel claim of 
moral freedom, about to assert itself in victorious 
opposition to ancient despotism. To the injurious 
accusations laid against Christianity, Origen replied by 
describing its peaceable triumphs in the midst of an 
opposing world, and observed that its progress might 
be tracked by bleeding footprints, and by benefits 
conferred. A new society, the school of all virtues, 
purifying all who entered it, had arisen in the midst of 
the darkness of universal corruption, and heroic sufferings 

38 



586 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

had sealed, first, the testimony of its early apostles, and 
then that of innumerable missionaries. From the defence 
of the Christians themselves, Origen proceeds to that of 
the religion they honour. He proves its superiority in 
the matter of form, its transparent simplicity making 
the truth accessible to the unlearned man, to the child, 
the woman, and the slave, and he repeats the beautiful 
and touching invitation of Christ : " If any man 
thirst, let him come unto me and drink." This pure 
and limpid stream of living water was surely better 
than that intoxicating cup of man's admixture, which 
was offered only to a few of the initiated — the wor- 
shippers of artistic beauty. In that doctrine which 
men called foolishness, because it could not be arrived 
at by a process of pure and unaided reasoning, — since 
it was as much beyond the grasp of man as the finite 
is beyond the infinite, — the apologist discerns all the 
treasures of wisdom and of truth, and he shows that 
faith is a legitimate mode of attaining certainty, and one 
in conformity with the laws of knowledge. Having 
established by an erudite discussion the originality of 
the new religion, showing that it is not a heterogeneous 
compound of the religious and philosophical ideas of 
the ancients, he presents it as the central point in the 
history of mankind, the goal of all its aspirations. 
This train of thought leads him to exalt the dignity of 
man in the name of a true theism, as opposed to 
pantheistic fatalism. The proud philosophers of pan- 
theism, trampling man's moral nature in the dust, 
preferred to place him lower than the brutes rather 
than bow before the Crucified One, and receive salva- 
tion as a glorious gift from a free and .personal God. 
A true and deep respect for the soul, created in the 
image of God, but fallen from its high estate, is the 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 587 

best explanation of the great mystery of godliness — the 
humiliation and incarnation of the God-Man. The 
resurrection of Christ is established by a full and 
learned process of argument, because it is of far more 
significance than a simple miracle ; it is Christianity 
itself. We have observed that Origen does not make 
miracle or prophecy the main-stay of the Gospel ; in and 
beyond both he seeks the sacred sign of the ultimate re- 
ligion for mankind — that impress of moral perfection 
which witnesses to the Son of God. The person of the 
Good Shepherd of the sheep, who lays down His life for 
them, and with yearning compassion goes after that which 
is lost, until He find it, shines forth with pure and hea- 
venly lustre throughout the work of Origen. He is per- 
petually set forth as the Desire of all nations, the true 
desire of the heart of every man. But in order to discern 
His beauty and His divinity beneath the veil of His hu- 
miliation, the new eye is needed, the eye of the pure in 
heart. Sin must be cast away ; the soul must rise out 
of the dust of this lower world, to those clear heights 
which the mists of earth cannot reach. Those alone 
will see and believe, who desire to hear and see. 
Origen insists, with holy importunity, whether he is 
addressing himself to Jew or Greek, on the necessity 
of this determination of the will. Every question, 
whether of greater or less importance, leads him to 
urge this act of moral volition, on which faith, with all 
its divine evidences, will follow. His whole apology 
might be summed up in this saying of Christ : " If any 
man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine 
whether it be of God." Thus he harmonises respect 
for human nature with hatred of the sin which has 
defiled it; largeness of thought with strictness of con- 
science. Profiting by the labours of those who had 



588 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

gone before him, Origen gave to Christian antiquity 
its most complete apology — that which is most in confor- 
mity with the spirit of the Gospel, and was best adapted 
to bring men's thoughts into captivity to the obedience 
of Christ, in the age of universal agitation in which 
he lived. Many centuries were yet to elapse before 
the Church could present to the world any other 
defence of her faith comparable to this noble book 
written by one under the ban of excommunication. 

The West gives us but two apologists belonging 
to this noble school. The first is St. Hippolytus, 
bishop of the port of Rome. We find these significant 
words in his treatise against the Jews :* "The eye of 
reason is the Spirit ; t by it we discern spiritual things. 
If you have the Spirit, you will comprehend heavenly 
things, for like comprehends like." We might almost 
imagine these were the words of Clement of Alexandria. 
Hippolytus admits that the ancient world was not 
wholly destitute of truth ; he cites with eulogy some 
of the noble thoughts of Plato. J He does not hesitate 
to take up, in his book on the Universe, the myth of 
Timaeus, in reference to the future life. The famous 
motto of Socrates, Know thyself, is, he says, con- 
firmed by the Gospel, which has revealed to us that 
the true destiny of man is to be completely united to 
God.§ From the great pile of pagan error and super- 
stition, as from a vast heap of smouldering ruins, rises 
a flame, an aspiration, a desire, which will point true 

* A fragment of the "Discourse to the Jews " is found in Appendix 
III. of the anonymous " Acta Martyrum," p. 449-488. The unknown 
compiler ascribed it to Cyprian ; but the clear analogy of the 
passage with the fragment we find in Fabricius points conclusively 
to Hippolytus as the author. 

f To vvevfia. J " Philosoph.," I. 19. 

§ Ibid., I. i8 ; compared with Ibid , X. 34. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 589 

hearts to Christ. "The word," he says, "will help 
those who are eager to know the truth, not only to 
escape the seductive snares of heresy, because its prin- 
ciples will be known, but also not to be troubled in 
mind by the opinions of the philosophers, because a 
true vision will pierce through their dark sayings." * 

The following fragment from the writings of Minu- 
tius Felix, shows that he belonged to the same school 
of apologists : " Have we not on this matter the 
universal consent of mankind ? When the unlettered 
man raises his hands to heaven, he utters no name but 
the name of God. God is great; God is true ; if it pleases 
God ; such is the voice of Nature, and would not this 
also be the prayer of the Christian ? Those who make 
Jupiter the sovereign deity, err only in name ; they are 
one with us as to the unity of the power." 

These closing words show that Minutius Felix dis- 
cerned, even in the gross darkness of popular paganism, 
a ray of religious truth, the smoking flax of the prophet ; 
and this vision of the divine he saw shining forth far 
more clearly in the higher culture of antiquity. Minu- 
tius takes pleasure in gathering up the witness of poets 
and philosophers to the unity and majesty of God ; he 
is, indeed, perhaps open to the charge of giving too 
favourable an interpretation to indefinite expressions 
which, in their natural sense, belonged rather to a 
vague pantheism, than to a genuine and sound mono- 
theism. He goes further than the boldest of the school 
of Alexandrine catechists, in his estimate of the results 
of the ancient philosophy. " I have given," he says, 
"the opinions of all the most illustrious philosophers. 
All have taught the one God under various names, so 

* "En Hie teal rovq ry d\r]6eia Trpoa'tx OVTa Q tyikofiaOtig Trpo[3if3doei 6 
\6yoQ. (" Philosoph.," IV. 45.) 



590 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

that it might be inferred either that Christians are the 
philosophers of our day, or that the philosophers were 
Christians by anticipation." * Elsewhere Octavius 
appeals to the testimony of the philosophers, in support 
of the dogma of the final judgment and of the resurrec- 
tion, but in this respect he exaggerates the influence 
of Hebrew prophecy over the schools of Greece. t 

§ III. The Second School of Apologists of Primitive 
Christianity. 

In addition to the great school of apologists who 
recognise a work of preparation for Christianity in the 
ancient world, and especially in the higher develop- 
ments of Greek philosophy, we find another school of 
narrower views, which, while admitting like the former 
an essential relation between the new religion and the 
human soul, condemns in toto, and often with much 
bitterness, everything born of paganism, whether the 
philosophical systems of the schools, or the mysterious 
fables of the sanctuaries. This school of apologists, 
though inferior in mental power to that which flourished 
at Alexandria, pleaded the cause of Christianity with 
greater, because more passionate eloquence, while no 
considerations availed to temper or check the virulence 
of its invectives. We shall pass rapidly over the 
inferior works belonging to this school, that we may 
form our estimate of it, more particularly from its most 
distinguished writings. 

The line of demarcation between the more timid 

* " Ut quivis arbitretur, aut nunc Christianos philosophos esse, 
aut philosophos fuisse jam Christianos." (" Octav.," xx.) 

f " Quod illi de divinis praedicationibus prophetarum umbram 
interpolate veritatis imitati sunt." (Ibid., xxxiv.) 






BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 59I 

apologists of the broad school, and the more moderate 
of the school we are now considering, is somewhat diffi- 
cult to trace. Both admit that the Greek philoso- 
phers were acquainted with the sacred books of the 
Jews, but they differ in this, that while Justin and 
Athenagoras suppose a direct operation of the Spirit of 
God upon the soul of the illustrious representatives 
of paganism, the apologists of the second school refer 
the scattered elements of truth found in the midst o. 
pagan error, exclusively to the writings of Moses and 
the prophets. They also appeal to the oracles of the 
Sibyl, which they regard as a true prophecy given to 
Greece. 

(a.) Tertullian. 

The two " Discourses to the Greeks," falsely attri- 
buted to Justin, are distinguished by the bitterness, of 
their sarcasms against the whole ancient pagan world. 
Tatian, who subsequently became a heretic, is even 
more violent and implacable in his hostility to all 
the higher culture of the ancients. The " Letter to 
Diognetes," though more moderate in form, is no less 
severe upon the religion and philosophy of Greece.* 

* The " Letter to Diognetes" was, as is well-known, long attributed 
to Justin. This theory has been taken up with a great show of 
demonstration by Otto (" In Opera Justin," 1849, Vol. II. p. 156) ; 
but it will not bear close examination. 1st. The difference between 
the unknown author and Justin Martyr is very marked. This is 
at once palpable, if a page of the two Apologies and a page of the 
" Dialogue with Trypho" be collated. 2nd. The difference of thought 
on very important points is no less distinct. The doctrine of the 
spermatic Word is entirely absent from the " Epistle to Diognetes." 
Paganism is there represented as absolute error, and no exception is 
made in favour of the philosophers. The Mosaic institutions are 
condemned with equal severity, while in the " Dialogue with Trypho," 
their divine origin is clearly acknowledged. 3rd The author of 
the " Letter to Diognetes " regards the false gods as merely idols of 



592 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Tertullian was the most illustrious representative of 
the second school of apologists ; he expounded its 
principles with all his incomparable power of style. 
No one has vindicated more forcibly than he, the rela- 
tionship of the human soul to God, and no one has 
pronounced a sterner or more sweeping anathema on all 
the past of paganism. We shall not here revert to 
that part of his Apology which may be regarded as a 
forensic plea ; of this we have already given a full 
analysis. We have listened to his eloquent and solemn 
protest against the injustice of the course pursued 
towards the Christians, and to his juridical demon- 
stration, that their condemnation by the tribunals of 
the empire was illegal. This part of his treatise is 
entirely distinct from the theoretic discussion of the 
Christian religion. In order to place beyond a doubt 
the iniquity of the Roman judges, it sufficed to de- 
nounce their practices, and to refute the calumnies 
popularly circulated against the Christians. It was of 
great importance to disprove the dangerous charge of 
rebellion against the emperor ; and lastly, it was need- 
wood and stone ; Justin treats them as demoniacal powers. It is, 
therefore, impossible to consider him the author of a writing which 
is directly contradictory of his most characteristic views. (See the 
working out of this thesis in Semisch, " Justin der Martyrer." 
Breslau, 1840, Vol. I. p. 172 ; and in his article in Herzog's " Ency- 
clopaedia" on the " Letter to Diognetes." See also the " Prolegou- 
mena" of Hefele's edition of the "Apostolic Fathers," 1849.) 
Dorner, not without hesitation, ascribes the anonymous letters to 
Quadratus. ("Die Person Christi," Vol. I. p. 198.) Bunsen, with- 
out sufficient reason, ascribes it to Marcion (" Hippolytus," Vol. I. 
p. 130.) The genuineness of the last two chapters is strongly 
disputed for three reasons : — 1. The oldest MS. of the letter bears 
evident traces of the doubt which hung over this fragment of 
Christian antiquity. 2. The Epistle suddenly changes tone ; it 
drops the form of a letter, and takes the turn of a general allocu- 
tion. 3. The author speaks of the Law and the Prophets in a 
manner which contradicts the former part of the " Letter to 
Diognetes." 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 593 

ful to set the impunity allowed to the crimes of the 
pagans in contrast with the implacable severity, with 
which the most innocent and law-abiding citizens were 
treated. This argument, of which we have shown the 
close continuity and impassioned process, is conclusive 
as a defensive plea for the Christians ; but the apology, 
properly so called, required a more vigorous effort of 
thought. The forensic question, which is always more 
or less external, must give place to the religious and 
philosophical question ; the great cause now to be 
pleaded is the subject-matter itself of the religion of 
Christ. Is that religion indeed the sole true and divine 
religion ? This is the capital point to be established. 
Tertullian has not evaded this difficult task ; the con- 
cluding chapters of his Apology, and his treatise on the 
" Testimony of the Soul," are devoted to this line of 
demonstration. He has carried into it the asperity of 
a narrow and often violent spirit, but he has also dis- 
played the highest qualities of his genius. He has left 
an ineffaceable track* in the domain of the higher 
apology. On this subject he has written some of those 
immortal pages, which are an enduring treasure to man- 
kind, and to which every generation of Christians recurs 
as to a text of inexhaustible fulness. To exalt human 
nature in itself, but at the same time to pour scorn 
on all that goes beyond its most simple and natural 
manifestation, all, namely, that belongs to the more or 
less refined culture of the intellect, — such is the twofold 
purpose of Tertullian's writing. It appears in all his 
books, and is most fully manifested in his apology for 
Christianity. He dwells, therefore, with much insist- 
ance upon the aspirations of the human heart ; he is 
not afraid to seek in fallen man a pillar or stepping- 
stone for the work of salvation, but at the same time, 



594 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

by a strange contradiction, he refuses to see anything 
but unmixed error in the higher developments of 
humanity prior to Christianity. The divine element, 
he holds, is lost as thought becomes refined and culti- 
vated ; philosophy is, in his eyes, plagiarism or a lie. 
The exaltation of simple human nature, the utter de- 
preciation of all mental culture, is the substance of 
Tertullian's apology. Herein lies its greatness and its 
weakness, its glory and its inconsistency. He is bold 
and profound, when he points out the germ of the 
Word existing still in fillen man ; he is unjust when 
he charges philosophy with necessarily stifling that 
germ. 

If there is one question upon which, in 311 ages, 
apologists have been divided, it is the question of the 
place that should be assigned to the authority of Scrip- 
ture in the demonstration of the truth of Christianity. 
One large school has maintained, and still maintains, 
that we must turn from the Scriptures to Christ, and 
not from Christ to the Scriptures. It affirms that the 
sole task of the defender of Christianity, is to establish 
the claims of the sacred book on the ground of miracle 
and prophecy ; this task once accomplished, there is 
nothing more to be done than to open the Bible; its 
texts have henceforward the force of law; all the 
mysteries of revelation are to be received unreservedly ; 
he who has declared his faith in the container, must 
needs believe implicitly in that which it contains. 
Another school objects, with reason, that such a method 
secures only a purely intellectual assent ; tbmt it does 
not carry conviction to the centre of the moral life, to 
the heart and conscience ; and that it demands from 
the unbeliever more than he can really give, for the 
authority of the letter must be null with him, till he shall 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 595 

have been reached and subdued by the influence of the 
Divine Spirit, which is the life of the letter, and which 
can only be grasped by the moral faculties. This 
second school holds, therefore, that an appeal made 
to the conscience must be the first thing, and that the 
soul must be brought into the presence of Christ, as 
He is represented to us in the Scripture, as into the 
presence of the ideal towards which its own aspirations 
reach, and that thus alone can the divine witness be 
felt and perceived in the holy book, which is filled by 
the presence of the God-Man. 

Tertullian, the ardent advocate of ecclesiastical 
authority in the early period of his religious life, and 
the author of the treatise on the Prescriptions, openly 
avowed these often-decried principles, which are sup- 
posed in our day to be new because they have been 
so long forgotten. His treatise on the " Testimony of 
the Soul" opens with these words : " Long researches 
and a strong memory are required in order to dis- 
cover by study the evidences in support of Christian 
truth, scattered through the authentic writings of the 
poets and philosophers, or in those of any masters 
of the philosophy and wisdom of this age, so as to 
carry conviction to our enemies and persecutors from 
their own literature. Some Christians, who have con- 
tinued to cultivate letters, and have retained in a 
faithful memory their former literary knowledge, have 
composed, with a view to convincing the pagans, 
treatises in which they have sought out the reason, 
the origin, and connection oi every Christian thought, 
and they have thus proved that our religion has in it 
nothing so strange ; that, on the contrary, it has on its 
side the universal consent Oi mankind contained in 
these books, and that it has confined itself to suppress- 



596 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ing errors and adding truths to this common stock. 
But obdurate humanity has not been willing to believe 
its own masters, even the most illustrious and those 
of highest authority, when they have been thus made 
to furnish a justification of Christianity; and yet it 
was these very same poets who ascribed to the gods 
the passions and vanities of men, and these very same 
proud philosophers who would carry the gates of truth 
by storm. Let us, then, leave on one side the literary 
or philosophical works, which minister only a delusive 
delight, and of which the errors are better accredited 
than the truths. Still, further, let us not call to our 
aid even the testimonies which the Christian recognises 
as true, if we would be free from all reproach. Our 
sacred books are, in fact, ignored by our adversaries ; 
or if they are known to them, they inspire no con- 
fidence. So far are men from coming to our sacred 
books as to an ultimate authority, that in order so 
to come they must be already Christians."* 

Tertullian seeks to find a principle, accepted alike 
by his adversaries and by himself, in the discussion 
upon which he is entering. He rightly recognises that 
this common basis is not to be sought in erudition, 
for a considerable time would be necessary to free 
universal truths from all foreign matters mixed up with 
them in the literature of the various nations. He 
also admits that he cannot seek this common basis 
in Scripture, the authority of which is recognised only 
by Christians; where, then, is it to be sought, except 
in the conscience? According to him, the spontaneous 

* " Imo nihil, ornnino relatum sit, quod agnoscat Christianus, r>e 
exprobrare possit.* Nam et quod relatum est, Deque omnes sciunt, 
neque qui sciunt constare confidunt. Tanto abest, ut nostris 
litteris annuant homines, adquas nemo venit, nisi jam Christianus." 
(Tertullian, " De Testim. Animae," i.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 597 

witness of the human soul is in favour of Christ. To 
this, then, he appeals, as to a tribunal, the competence 
of which is admitted by his opponents as fully as 
by himself. Already, in his Apology, he had given 
expression to the same thought. " Will you listen," 
he says, " to the witness of your own soul ? Fet- 
tered as it is by the bonds of the body, encom- 
passed as it is with evil, enervated by passion and 
lust, and enslaved by a false worship; if it is once 
aroused from its deep sleep of intoxication, if in the 
midst of its sickness it cries aloud for health, it at 
once utters the name of God, the one inevitable name : 
Great God ! Good God ! If it please God ! Such is the 
language of universal man. God is invoked as Judge. 
God knows, men say ; I appeal to God. God shall 
avenge me. O, spontaneous testimony of the naturally 
Christian soul! "* Tertullian thus emphatically affirms 
that conscience leads to the Gospel revelation, or 
rather that between the one and the other is found 
the agreement, which ought to exist between two 
revelations of the same God. His treatise on the 
" Testimony of the Soul " is the working out of this 
great idea. Let us listen to his own words. " I 
call," he says, "on a new witness, one better known 
than any literature, more widely diffused than any 
science, more popular than any book, greater than 
all else in man ; I call on that which constitutes 
the unity of human nature.! Come, then, O soul, 
whether with many philosophers, we acknowledge thee 
as divine and eternal, and therefore incapable of false- 

* "O testimonium animae naturaliter Christianas !" ("Apologia," 
xvii.) 

f " Novum testimonium advoco, imo omni litteratura notius omni 
doctrina agitatius, omni editione vulgatius, toto homini majus, 
id est totum quod est hominis." (" De Testim. Animae," i ) 



598 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

hood ; or whether, according to the idea of Epicurus 
alone, thou hast not even received immortality from 
Deity, and in that case dost therefore deem thyself the 
more bound to frankness ; whether thou hast come 
down from heaven, or risen out of the earth, whether 
numbers or atoms compose thy being, whether thy 
formation coincides with that of the body or follows 
it ; whatever be the elements of thy nature, thou art 
equally the seat of reason, of intelligence, of feeling. 
I summon thee, not as thou art, when fashioned by 
the schools, polished in libraries, and breathing out 
the wisdom acquired in the academies and porticoes 
of Athens ; I want thee in thy simple, rude, un- 
cultured, ignorant state, as thou art in those who 
have added nothing to nature.* I go to seek thee 
on the public highway, or in the workshop ; I want 
thine inexperience, because no one has any longer 
confidence in thine experience, so sorry is it. I 
ask of thee only that which thou dost originally 
bring to man, only that which thou hast learnt from 
thyself, or from thine author, be he who he may.t 
Thou art not to my knowledge, Christian, for no one 
is born a Christian, but must become one. The 
Christians, however, appeal to thy testimony, although 
thou art not of their sect ; thou shalt speak for us 
against thine own defenders,]: so that they may be 
ashamed to hate and ridicule in us, a doctrine to 
which thou hast made them accessory." 

* " Te simplicem et rudem et impolitam et idioticam compello, 
qualem habent qui te solam habent." (" De Testim. Animas," 'O 

f " Ea expostulo, quae tecum in hominem infers, quae aut ex 
temet ipsa, aut ex quocunque auctore tuo sentire didicisti." (Ibid.) " 

I "Non es, quod sciam, Christiana ; fieri enim non nasci soles 
Christiana. Tamen nunc a te testimonium flagitant Chnstiani, ab 
extranea adversus tuos." (Ibid,) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 599 

Tertullian establishes, by a noble train of argument, 
the authority of the Scriptures, but his main point is 
to prove the divinity of the Founder of the Church. 
On such a subject it is of supreme importance that 
the truth be brought into full light. To clear away 
from the sacred person of Christ all the mists of 
human prejudice, and to bring Him into direct contact 
with the conscience, is the first duty of the defender 
of the faith. In presence of the' eternal and living 
Word, confidence in the intrinsic force of the divine 
is at least as well founded as when the subject treated 
of is the written word. Thus Tertullian aims es- 
pecially to exalt the majesty of the Word, and to 
secure its recognition, and adoration for it even in its 
lowest humiliation. W T e meet here and there in the 
Apology with some historical evidence adduced, but 
this, unfortunately, is very weak, and is founded 
on legendary data, such as the pretended letter of 
Pilate to Tiberius,* or on facts which are doubtful, 
such as the mention in the annals of the empire 
of the eclipse which darkened the sun during the 
crucifixion. t 

Tertullian is more happy when he establishes, by 
the Holy Scriptures, that the humiliations of Christ, 
which are scandal in the Jew's esteem, and folly to 
the Greek, formed part of the Divine plan ; that they 
had been foretold by the Saviour Himself, and that 
consequently they were an element of His voluntary 
sacrifice.; The incarnation of the Son of God was 
looked for not only by the chosen people, but also by 
pagan humanity, as is proved by its myths and fables, 

" Apologia," xxi. f Ibid. 

" Praedixerat et i] 
phetse retro." (Ibid.) 



600 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which show even in their falsehoods, the reflection of 
the deathless hope of the human heart.* 

After tracing, in common with previous apologists, 
the moral effects of the new religion, Tertullian appeals 
to the success of the exorcisms. The witness of the 
demons is, according to him, so much the more worthy 
of belief, that it is contrary to their interest to give 
it, since they run the risk of losing the sacrifice, which 
is dearer to them than any other — the sacrifice of 
Christian victims. We cannot but wonder to find the 
author of the " Testimony of the Soul " giving weight 
on this point to an argument, which has no better 
basis than an ephemeral superstition. Thus do the 
noblest apologies suffer from the influence of the 
prejudices of their day. The more the defender of 
Christianity clings to the great arguments derived 
from the inner nature of Christianity itself, and from 
the depths of the moral being, the more deeply does 
he impress on his work the seal of imperishability, 
and the more does he raise it above the fluctuations 
of human knowledge, which is ever limited and 
variable. 

All is not done when the truth of Christianity is 
established; it has yet to be shown that Christianity 
alone has any true claim to man's allegiance. In this 
department of his subject, the apologist has to deal 
with three rival influences : paganism, Judaism, and 
philosophy. We have already repeatedly noticed with 
what bitter sarcasm Tertullian speaks of the pagan 
religion, with what utter scorn he treats its gods, 
with what an 'unsparing hand he dashes to the dust 

* " Sciebant et qui penes vos ejusmodi fabulas asmulas ad de- 
structionem veritatis istiusmodi praeministraverunt." (" Apologia," 
xxi.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 6oi 

its most venerated idols. These gods, which are no 
gods, which were all in the first instance men like 
ourselves, have become men worse than ourselves, and 
it would not be prudent for them to establish them- 
selves in our cities, for they would fall under the 
condemnation of our most sacred laws. For the rest, 
it is not possible to despise them more deeply than 
do their own worshippers, who pretend to do them 
honour by the most infamous vices, and who expose 
them in their theatres to public derision. We need 
only remind the reader of those pages of burning 
indignation, from which we have already quoted at 
some length, which brand, as with a red-hot iron, those 
against whom they are directed.* The impotence of 
the pagan gods equals their vileness ; they are power- 
less either to deliver or to punish. 

Judaism, which is far above paganism, may seem 
a more dangerous rival to the new religion. It has 
the advantage of professing monotheism, and the 
Church openly acknowledges the authority of its sacred 
books. But God, as Tertullian shows, passed a clear 
sentence of condemnation upon it, when He punished 
and scattered the chosen people, and the goodly 
heritage of the promises must needs have been trans- 
ferred to a new Israel. 

Philosophy; whether we consider its influence upon 
the life, or pass in review its various systems, all 
alike vague and uncertain, cannot but take much 
lower ground than that occupied by the religion of 
Christ. Tertullian goes further than this. He affirms 
that philosophy is less reasonable than the Gospel, 
and that under pretence of the freest exercise of the 

* " Apologia," x. xviii. 

39 



602 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

intellect, it demands of it larger sacrifices than the 
lowly religion of the Crucified. In truth, philosophy 
has also its mysteries, which are far more opposed to 
reason than are those of faith; all it has done has 
been to mar and deform sacred truths. It is strange 
that men should have been eager to accept in such 
a disguised and distorted shape the very ideas which, 
in their purest form, they reject, when they are ex- 
hibited in the full light of Christianity. When the 
Gospel speaks of a judgment of God, men scoff at 
the doctrine ; but when poets and philosophers set 
up in the infernal regions, a tribunal before which 
all of human race are to appear, they are listened 
to with respect. The everlasting burnings with which 
the Gospel threatens impenitent sinners, are heard of 
with shouts of derisive laughter; but the fable which 
tells of a river of fire flowing through the abode of 
the dead, meets with nothing but approbation. The 
paradise of the Christians is a byword of contempt ; 
but the Elysian fields are a universally accepted 
vision of delight.* 

If these great truths, which have the concurrent wit- 
ness both of philosophy and religion, are not generally 
admitted, the cause is in the perversity of the human 
heart, which Tertullian well characterises as " the 
indurating effect of a wilful error, which has blunted 
the fine sense of the conscience." t The one thing which 
the apologist asks of the adversary to Christianity is, 
that he will purify himself; for the corruption of thought 
and life once earnestly renounced, he will have the 
pure heart which sees God ; he will recognise God in 

* " Apologia," xlvii. 

f "Teneritas conscientiae obduratur in callositatem voluntarii 
erroris." ("Ad Nationes," II. I.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 603 

the very religion which he has held accursed, and from 
a persecutor will become a Christian. When he comes 
truly to know the much reviled religion, he will no 
more revile, but will himself gladly embrace it.* How 
should it be otherwise, since the human soul is natu- 
rally Christian ? Let it be freed from the corrupting 
influence of sin, let the human interpolation be erased 
from this divine text, and the soul's testimony will 
be given in favour of Christianity. The spectacle of 
the Christians dying at the stake and in the circus, 
is indeed sufficient to show that they have on their 
side God and the truth. We have already observed 
what grand expression Tertullian gives to this idea. 
His defence of Christianity concludes with that tri- 
umphal hymn of martyrdom which we have quoted, 
and which was a more convincing evidence than any 
reasoning in those days of scepticism and moral ener- 
vation, on which side was the power that must ulti- 
mately triumph. 

After this outline of the Apology of the great African 
teacher, we can form a fair estimate both of its merits 
and defects. It presents to us a very remarkable chain 
of thought. Its main arguments sustain and strengthen 
one another. They cannot be accused of nullifying or 
destroying each other, as is too often the case when 
the apologist is more bent on accumulating proofs 
than on weighing them, Tertullian commenced by 
producing the immortal letter of credit of Christianity 
—Conscience, and he freed its testimony from all that 
impaired or obscured it. This universally acknow- 
ledged witness was the first he invoked, and only after 

* " Emendate vosmet ipsos prius, lit Christianos pimiatis ; nisi 
quod emendaveritis, non punietis, imo eritis Christiani. Discite 
quod in nobis accusetis, et non accusabitis." (" Ad Nationes," 1. 19.) 



604 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

its testimony had been heard, did he appeal to Scrip- 
ture. His great merit lay in the admirable combina- 
tion of Scriptural with moral evidence. From the 
former he sought only that which it can legitimately 
give in controversy with an unbeliever, namely, the 
direct and irresistible impression of the divine, result- 
ing from the beauty and majesty of the sacred book. 
He carefully avoided appealing to the Scriptures as an 
established authority, cutting short all discussion, 
before conviction had been reached. That which he 
sought more than all else in the written word, was the 
living Word, the person of Christ Himself, and, his 
great aim was to set the ideal Christ in full relief, 
though it must be confessed he failed to give due 
prominence to His character of mercy, and we miss 
that soft halo of love which is the most powerful 
attraction of the Saviour. The moral effects of Chris- 
tianity, and its power to reform the life, furnished 
Tertullian with a fourth argument, on which he justly 
laid much stress. The courage of the apostles and 
confessors affixes, in his judgment, the ineffaceable seal 
of blood to the doctrine they taught. 

The feeblest part of the Apology is that which deals 
with the external evidence, for instead of leaning for 
support upon the true and glorious miracles of the 
Gospel, and upon the grand testimony of history, Ter- 
tullian has recourse to apocryphal prodigies, and to the 
confessions of poor maniacs, who supposed themselves 
to be possessed with demons. But he appears again in 
all the strength of his vehement dialectics, and with 
all the fire of his eloquence, when he casts at the feet 
of Christ all the religious and philosophic systems 
of the past. It is only candid, however, to admit 
that here he displays also his intolerance, his bitter 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 605 

sarcasm, and that contempt for all high culture, which 
deprives him of some of the most valuable arguments 
to be derived from the history of civilisation, and finally 
that intensity of passion which constitutes at once his 
weakness and his strength. 

Among those who followed in the track of Tertullian, 
may be mentioned the poet Commodian, who is a 
severe satirist of all pagan culture ; and Cyprian, who, 
attaching supreme importance to external authority, 
reproduces in a feebler form the principal argument of 
his illustrious master, as may be seen from his tract 
addressed to Donatus. 



§ IV. Third School of Apologists of the Primitive Church. 
The Apology of Amobius. 

The third school of Christian apologists cannot be 
accused of having servilely followed in a beaten 
track ; for they opened out an entirely new course, and 
effected a real revolution. The" method pursued by 
this school is directly opposed to that of Origen and 
Tertullian. This will be evident from a statement of 
the principles from which they start, which are fully 
developed in the treatise of Arnobius against the 
pagans. 

In this, as in every apologetic work, we find two 
distinct portions, the one devoted to positive contro- 
versy, and the other to the demonstration of the 
truth. Arnobius' argument is distinguished only by its 
violence ; its principal merit is that it brings to the 
light the hidden vileness of paganism, and supports its 
allegations with much fulness of detail. Even this merit 
becomes a fault by its exaggeration, for the pictures 



606 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which Arnobius draws are often so wanting in delicacy 
and purity, as to offend the sense of modesty. His 
style has neither the eloquent breadth of Cyprian, nor 
the powerful and telling conciseness of Tertullian. 
Arnobius directs his attacks rather against paganism in 
its grossest form : his mode of controversy is therefore 
iow and vulgar ; he returns insult for insult, and does not 
dignify, either by eloquent indignation or biting irony, 
arguments which are only too well adapted to the base 
souls whom he is addressing. He displays more modera- 
tion in his defence of Christianity, all his vehemence 
being reserved for the attack upon his adversaries. To 
those who assert that the newreligion has brought a thou- 
sand evils upon the world, he replies, with justice, that 
there has been no change in the aspect of terrestrial 
things since the appearance of Christianity. The scourges 
with which the world is visited now, are the same that 
were common prior to the Christian era.* It would 
be, furthermore, an insult to the ancient divinities 
to aseribe to them a wrath so cruel against a rival 
worship. t The pagans have no ground for reproaching 
Christians with serving a crucified Master, unless they 
are prepared to admit that Platonism was dishonoured 
by the death of Socrates. A heroic death does honour 
to the cause for which it is endured. Paganism itself 
holds in higher veneration a god who has been slain, 
as, for instance, Esculapius and Hercules.J The 
hatred of the pagans to Jesus Christ is so much 
the less to be understood that they can tolerate all 
the false gods and all the philosophers, while Christ 
alone has conferred upon mankind benefits innumer- 
able^ It is idle to reproach Christianity with its 

* Arnobius, "Adv. Gentes," I. I, 6. f Ibid., I. 17, 24. 

I Ibid., I. 40, 41. § Ibid., I. 63. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 607 

novelty ; the religion of those who bring such an accu- 
sation is but of recent date, as they themselves admit 
in the books in which they record the birth of their 
gods.* 

From the defensive, Arnobius passes to the offensive. 
The last five books of his treatise are devoted to a 
virulent controversy with paganism, in which, however, 
we can discover no novel arguments. The originality 
of the method of Arnobius consists in this, that he 
labours earnestly to degrade human nature, and to set 
aside the idea of any normal relationship between it 
and God. He admits, indeed, that the notion of one 
Supreme Being is universal. " Where is the man," he 
says, " who has not had this idea from the very dawn of 
his existence ? Where is the man in whom this belief 
in the sovereign Ruler of the universe, who orders it by 
His providence, has not been deeply and ineffaceably 
graven? Who has not brought it with him, as it 
were, out of his mother's womb ?"t He discovers in 
the writings of the philosophers traces of the truths 
taught by Christianity, but he is careful to guard 
against the supposition that these notions are a direct 
communication of the Word to the soul, an emanation 
from that uncreated light which lightens every man 
who comes into the world. The idea of God, Arno- 
bius does not, in fact, regard as the prerogative of 
man ; he believes it to be equally present in insensate 
nature and in the lower animals. " If the dumb 
animals," he says, " could make themselves under- 
stood, if they could speak our language ; still more, if 
trees, earth, and stones, were, by a sudden access of 

* Arnobius, "Adv. Gentes," II. 66, 70. 

f " Cui non sit ingenitum, non affixum .... esse regem ac 
dominum cunctorum qusecumque sunt moderatorem." (Ibid. I. 33.) 



608 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

vital breath, to become capable of forming sounds and 
uttering articulate words, should we not hear them, in 
the simple and incorruptible faith which nature instils 
into all created things, loudly proclaim that there is but 
one God, the King of the universe ?"* It is impossible 
to misunderstand this language ; the idea of God enter- 
tained by man, is only an impression left by the hand of 
the Creator in the clay He has moulded ; it is present 
as much in the lower creation as in man. On the 
book of the human heart have been traced the same 
characters as on the book of nature. If man possesses 
the idea of God, it is not that he has any inherent 
sense of the divine. Instead of recognising in it the 
utterance of conscience, we must regard it as an idea 
imparted from without ; from above, it is true, but still 
imparted in a manner wholly external, and never enter- 
ing into the moral constitution of the man ; it is 
common to all creatures. We must not, therefore, 
allow ourselves to be misled by isolated expressions, 
which give back a faint reflection of the nobler concep- 
tions of a previous period. Nor must the following 
fine invocation, in which Arnobius celebrates the God 
whom the whole universe proclaims, mislead us as to 
his true idea. " O great God," he exclaims, " Creator 
of things not seen, Thyself invisible and past finding out, 
Thou art worthy to receive the unceasing homage of all 
that breathes and thinks, if any mortal mouth may be 
found worthy to pronounce Thy name. It is meet that all 
that lives should bow before Thee, and lift up perpetual 
prayer to Thee. Thou art, in truth, the great first 
Cause ; Thou hast stretched out the space in which all 

* " Ita non duce natura et magistra et intelligerent esse Deum 
et cunctorum dominum solum esse clamarenfc ? ; ' (" Adv. Gentes," 
l, 33) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 609 

things are contained ; Thou art the 'Cause of causes ; 
Thou art the infinite uncreated* Being, without begin- 
ning and without end ; Thou art the only One, who 
dwelleth in no corporeal form, unbounded by time or 
space, who art above all quality or quantity, who dost 
neither rest nor move, nor dost pass through any 
change whatever, who canst not be expressed by mortal 
tongue. The man who has learnt to comprehend 
aught of Thee should keep silence,* and if in his roving 
search he has discerned but a faint shadow of Thy 
glory, it is not lawful for him to utter it. Pardon, O 
Thou King Supreme, those who persecute Thy ser- 
vants; and, as becomes Thy mercy, have pity on the 
unhappy ones who reject Thy name and Thy religion. 
It is not strange that men should be ignorant of Thee ; 
it would be stranger, indeed, did they know Thee." J 
This passage deserves to be quoted, not only on account 
of its great beauty, but also because, in spite of some 
appearances to the contrary, it is entirely in harmony 
with the system of Arnobius. The most striking fea- 
ture of the invocation is the care taken by the writer to 
exalt only those divine attributes which are incom- 
municable, to mark the deep gulf between man and the 
Creator, and to place the Deity at such a distance from 
us, that there should be no natural communication 
between us and Him. We must observe that the 
separation thus dwelt upon, is not that between the 
fallen creature and the Most Holy. No ; in this passage 
Arnobius distinctly affirms that God is in His essence 
incomprehensible, which implies that we could not 
originally have received any communication from this 

* " Qui ut intelligaris, tacendum est." (" Adv. Gentes," I. 31.) 
t " Non est mirum si ignoraris ; majoris est admirationis, si 
sciaris." (Ibid.) 



6 10 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

pure essence. On this point, indeed, he expresses his 
thought with all possible clearness in the second book. 
There, in presence of that God who seems as • far 
removed from us as the God of Neo-Platonism, who is 
lost above the grasp of the creature and of thought in 
the void of His dead unity, he represents man as 
grovelling by nature in the dust of the earth, like the 
lowest of the creatures. The God of Arnobius is too 
far away, and man, as he regards him, is too low. 
This will appear from the analysis we are" about to 
give of this leading portion of his Apology. We shall 
see him, in his blind desire to rob man of all native 
Canity, falling into the most serious errors, and raising, 
by his replies, objections far more weighty than those 
which he endeavours to remove. 

Pride is assuredly a great obstacle to man's restora- 
tion, and we are ready to admit that the first duty 
of the apologist may be to apply to mankind those 
striking words from the Book of the Revelation: " Thou 
sayest, I am rich, and increased in goods, and have 
need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art 
wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and 
naked."* It is perfectly legitimate to dwell upon our 
present wretched condition, and to cast an unsparing 
light upon our faults and our frailties, provided only it 
be shown at the same time that these rags are but 
the soiled and tattered fragments of a royal mantle. In 
other words, the apologist ought to adduce evidence 
of the Fall, but not to cease to regard it as a Fall, 
that is, as a descent from primeval greatness, and 
the loss of a native nobility, of which the divine 
traces are still discernible. His task, then, is twofold ; 
he is bound to insist no less upon our first estate 
* Revelation iii. 17. 






BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 6ll 

of glory and felicity than upon our present miserable 
condition. The contrast between the past and the 
present will be so much the more impressive, when 
man is made fully conscious of his high origin. On 
the other hand, nothing is more opposed to the true 
purpose of a reasonable apology, than the degradation 
of human nature in itself, and the denial to man of 
any native greatness. Such a doctrine quenches in 
the soul every spark of repentance or high desire; 
it* sinks it deeper in the slough into which it has 
fallen ; it dooms man to inhale as his native air the 
impure atmosphere which is stifling his true life. By 
reflecting back on to primeval man the misery of man 
in his fallen state, the whole economy of the Christian 
religion is subverted, and its defence becomes impos- 
sible. Arnobius fell perpetually into this capital error. 
We should have had no ground for adverse criticism, 
if he had confined himself to protesting against the 
frivolous optimism which imagines that all is for the 
best in this world, as he does in these eloquent words : 
" If we should pretend, like some philosophers, that evil 
has no existence, every nation and every fraction of 
humanity would cry out against us, while they pointed 
to their wounds and to the innumerable evils which 
perpetually grieve and distress humanity." * But 
Arnobius is not satisfied with dispelling these wild 
illusions ; he ridicules without mercy those who assert 
that the soul is by its nature immortal, that it is 
of royal and divine race, and by its original dignity 
stands in close relation to the Most High. He is 
not satisfied until he has endeavoured to show that 
man has been placed by God at the very foot of the 

* " Reclamabunt cunctse gentes. universaeque nationes, cruciatus 
nobis ostentantes suos. ; " ("Adv. Gentes/* II. 54.) 



6l2 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

scale of being.* He even goes so far as to deny 
the spiritual essence of the soul. It is strange to 
see the Christian apologist thus taking his stand on 
the ground of the lowest materialism, with a view 
to reach such degrading conclusions. One might be 
.ready to ask, where has the spiritual portion of our being 
hidden itself, since the dissecting knife has failed to 
discover in the human body anything but molecules. 
We find in Arnobius' book the parallel so often traced 
by the materialistic school, between our organism and 
that of the lower animals. t Wherein do we differ 
from them ? Our bones are composed of the same 
materials ; our origin is not more noble than theirs. 
Arnobius does not let slip this opportunity to speak 
offensively of the sacred mysteries of birth. He asks 
if the great concern of man, as of his brethren the 
animals, is not to appease his hunger, and to protect 
his body; I and whether he does not, like them, suffer 
from a thousand ills, and finally mingle his ashes with 
the dust of the earth ? Arnobius forgets those count- 
less religions of polytheism, of which he elsewhere 
so bitterly complains, and against which especially his 
book is directed. Whatever may be their folly or 
their impurity, they at least remind us that man lives 
not by bread alone. 

Is it pleaded, he asks, that man's superiority lies in 
intellect and reason ? But if this were the case, then man- 
kind universally would show itself reasonable, temperate, 
and wise ; and by such signs alone could its superiority 

* "Adv. Gentes," II. 15. 

f " Quid est enim, quod nos ab eorum indicet similitudine dis- 
crepare ? Vel quae in nobis eminentia tanta est, ut animantium 
numero dedignemur adscribi ?" (Ibid., II. 16.) 

X " Quid aliud nos tantis agimus in occupationibus vitae, nisi ut 
ea quasramus, quibus famis periculum devitetur." (Ibid., II. 17.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 613 

be manifested, for man is less skilful in procuring his 
supplies of food than many animals. If nature had 
given flexible hands to them as to us, they would 
certainly have surpassed us. The arts are, after all, 
not so much heavenly gifts as the results of our 
poverty; the spur of necessity was required to urge 
us on to all those. fine inventions on which we so 
much pride ourselves. " If the soul possessed any 
knowledge worthy of a divine and deathless being, 
that knowledge would have been originally the common 
lot of all men.* But we find, on the contrary, that 
it is only groping their way along the path of slow 
progression, that men achieve the conquest of nature. 
The case is the same with art as with industry. If 
art were of divine origin, it would have been always 
and universally diffused throughout the earth, and we 
should not have seen artistic aptitude in its various 
forms so unequally distributed." We are really con- 
founded by the absurdity of such an argument. Arno- 
bius takes that to be a sign of inferiority which is 
the very seal of intellectual superiority. It is precisely 
because man is more than an animal, that he is born 
into the world the weakest and most helpless 01 crea- 
tures, but endowed at the same time with the infinite 
resources of reason, and designed to develop his own 
latent powers by their free exercise. Reason is not 
like instinct, which is identical in all the myriads of 
the same species ; it is progressive, inventive, and 
consequently more or less developed according to the 
individual constitution and circumstances. We must 
gotothe bee-hive or to a colony of beavers to find art and 

* " Ouod si haberent scientias animse, quas genus et habere 
divinum atque immortale condignum est, ab initio homines cuncti 
omnia scirent." ("Adv. Gentes," II. 18.) 



614 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

industry heaven-descended ; it is man's prerogative to 
fashion the instruments of his own progress, and to 
develop the resources of the world in developing his own. 
Everyone is familiar with the sublime simile of the 
cave in Plato's " Republic." Plunged into darkness, 
his limbs loaded with fetters, the miserable captive, 
who represents man in his actual condition, sees 
nothing but the dim and reversed image upon the 
wall of his prison, of objects he had been wont to 
behold in the clear light in which he had celebrated 
the sacred mysteries of the gods. Arnobius takes up 
this figure, but only to parody it egregiously. Pie also 
supposes a man shut up in a cave from his infancy, fed 
by a dumb nurse, and always finding ready to his hand 
all that he needed for the supply of his wants. Such 
a man would have no recollection of the glorious abode 
in which he may have been born ; he would have no 
knowledge, and would be at a loss how to use his 
heavy limbs ; he would be the most unintelligent of 
all created animals. Question him about himself, 
about the Author of his being, he would be more 
stupid than the beast of the field, more mute than 
stock or stone.* Arnobius draws the conclusion that 
all man's moral and intellectual wealth comes to 
him from without, not from within, and that it is 
through the senses that ideas reach him. The soul is 
originally a blank page, and all that it ultimately con- 
tains is inscribed on it by the outer world. The bark 
of the wild forest tree is not a more rough, unculti- 
vated thing than is the human mind in its original 
condition. It is not man who, by his fruitful activity, 
renews the face of the world, it is the world that makes 

* " Ita ille non omni pecore, ligno, saxo obtusior atque hebetior 
stabit ? " (" Adv. Gentes," 1 1 . 22.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 615 

man what he is. There is no living animal that is not 
by nature more richly endowed than man, for every 
animal brings with it into the world at least instinct 
as an infallible guide. " Behold, O men," Arnobius 
triumphantly exclaims, " behold this soul which you 
assert is inherently wise, immortal, perfect, divine ! * 
Behold this august being — man, endowed with reason, 
this model for the world, — behold him lower than the 
brute, more stupid than stock and stone ! No doubt, 
when he has passed through the schools and received 
the instruction of the learned, he will become intelli- 
gent, well-informed, and will rise out of this gross 
ignorance. But do not the ox and the ass, by habit, 
and under the stimulus of necessity, learn to till the 
land and to grind the corn ? Cease, then, to compare 
vile things with precious. Cease to place in the first 
rank and in the highest class of beings, the miserable 
creature — man.t He is a mendicant, destined to live in 
obscurity, and in the hut of the indigent, and not for 
the splendour of a life of nobility." 

What, then, did the apostle mean when he said that 
we are God's offspring ? The detractor of humanity 
does not content himself with taking from man's head 
the crown of immortality, he will not even admit that he 
has an important part to perform in the lower world, to 
which his ignoble origin is traced. He asks, ironically, 
what the earth would lose if it were deprived of the 
presence of that arrogant being who calls himself its 
king and benefactor ? What change would there be in 
the earth if man had no existence ? J The seasons 

* " Hsec est anima docta ilia, quam dicitis, immortalis, perfecta, 
divina." (" Adv. Gentes," II. 25.) 

t " Proletarius cum sit." (Ibid., II. 29.) 

I " Quid ergo ? Si homines non sint, ab omciis suis cessabit 
mundus?" (Ibid., II. 37.) 



6l6 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

would still succeed each other, the rain would come 
down to fertilise, the sun would shine to ripen. Man 
thinks only of himself, and gives himself no concern 
for the good of the world he inhabits. " Of what 
benefit is it to the world," asks Arnobius, " to have 
mighty kings, tyrants, sovereigns, and' I know not 
what titled dignities ? Of what avail to it are generals 
skilful in sieges, and soldiers invincible in fight, 
whether of infantry or cavalry ? What does it gain 
by orators, governors, poets, writers, philosophers, 
musicians, jesters, actors ? " * Arnobius passes in 
review all the arts of civilisation, and arrives at the 
same conclusion with regard to all. The sonorous ring 
of his oratory cannot conceal the absurdity of his 
reasoning, for if it is certain that the representation of 
a noble tragedy or the eloquence of a sublime dis- 
course, will not .make one grain of corn the more, it is 
no less certain that the high state of civilisation of 
which the liberal arts are an evidence, will give a 
general impulse to human activity, and this impulse 
will manifest itself in the higher cultivation of the 
soil, as surely as in the higher development of thought. 
Beside, what is the terrestrial creation without man 
but an incoherent phrase, unfinished and meaningless ? 
What is the temple without the priest, or the priest 
without the God ? Arnobius does not see that the 
whole creation thus stands in logical connection ; he 
ignores the fact that the earth would not be fruitful if 
the soul of man bore no fruit, and that the soul can be 
fruitful only if it is of divine origin. According to his re- 
presentation, not only is humanity of no use to the world, 
but it dishonours the world by its manifold crimes. 
The author details them complacently ; he paints the 
* « Adv. Gentes," II. 39-43. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. OI7 

picture in the darkest colours, and shrinks from no 
delineation, however hideous. He becomes really im- 
modest in describing the shameless sensual excesses of 
the age. This passage, in which the tricks of bad 
rhetoric are blended with the obscenities of impure 
literature, concludes with these words : " What say 
you to all this, oh glorious race, daughter of the Most 
High ? Such are these souls, endowed with wisdom, 
which ascribe their origin to the great First Cause, such 
are they, wise only in every sort of malice, crime, and 
infamy ! Doubtless it was to carry out boldly and 
boastingly their wicked practices, that they were sent 
into this portion of the universe in bodily form. What 
mortal, with the use of reason, can still hesitate to 
believe that this world was prepared expressly for his 
race, or, rather, that it has been prepared to be the 
theatre where such crimes might be daily perpe- 
trated?"* 

Arnobius thus persistently confounds the melancholy 
condition which is the result of the Fall, with the 
normal state of man, and from our actual degradation 
infers the baseness of our origin. Even this degrada- 
tion is not so absolute as by him represented. The 
history of mankind would be less complicated than it 
is, if the power of evil reigned unopposed, and we 
should have, instead of conflict between good and its 
opposite, only the continuous and unvarying develop- 
ment of sin. 

This miserable being — man — has his moments of 
greatness, when gleams of the divine flash through the 
darkness 01 his night. There have been men who, 
without being perfect, have done honour to their race 
by their wisdom and uprightness. But such exceptions 
* "Adv. Gentes," II. 39-43. 
40 



6l8 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

cause no embarrassment to Arnobius. He replies tbat 
these men constitute an insignificant minority, and that 
the human race is not to be judged by this minority, 
but by the moral condition of the masses. " In truth, 
the part is comprised in the whole, not the whole in the 
part.* Would any one say that the earth is of gold, 
because in certain places veins of the precious metal 
have been found ? Beside, even these select individuals 
are constrained to do incessant battle with their evil 
inclinations, which is a sufficient indication that the 
human nature which they share is in itself evil.t 
Arnobius would be certainly justified in concluding 
from these unquestionable facts that humanity is not 
in its normal condition, and that it is suffering from a 
deep-seated and universal disease ; but he offers no 
explanation of the fact that man is still conscious of 
mighty impulses towards good. The presence of this 
moral contradiction ought to have shown him that 
those who, like Plato, speak of a glorious past, and of 
an origin of which the imperishable memory lingers 
with us, are not deserving of utter ridicule ; it ought to 
have convinced him that this abject being was of a 
noble race, and that however much he may call for 
pity, scorn is misplaced. 

Arnobius has completed his demonstration. He 
has buried, as it were, the worm of the earth in the 
dust from which he sprang ; he has endeavoured to 
prove that man is in nothing superior to the beasts, 
that his soul is not made in the image of God, and 
that it has no more inherent claim to immortality than 
the brute that crops the grass of the field. For one 
moment he shrinks in alarm from the results of his own 

* " In toto enim est, non totum in parte." ("Adv. Gentes," 
II.49.) t Ibid., II. 50. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 619 

argument. He hears the applause of the disciples of 
Epicurus, whose cause he has in reality been uphold- 
ing. " Let us eat and drink," they say, " for to-morrow 
we die." He recoils from such a conclusion, though it 
is the fair sequence of his own principles, because he 
intends, after all, to defend Christianity. He goes on, 
therefore, to affirm that while the soul is not by its 
nature immortal, it may become so, and that God has 
sent His Son Jesus Christ to impart this immortality. 
Faith becomes in the soul the germ of eternal life.* 
The work of Christ is not a work of restoration, which, 
by bringing to us the gift of God Himself, gives back 
to us a lost good, for that good we never possessed ; it 
is rather an entirely new creation, which changes a vile 
animal into a being in the image of the Most High. 
Not only were we in our primitive state entire strangers 
to the divine life, but we could not make any claim on 
God even as our Creator. Our vile clay could not have 
been fashioned by His glorious hands, for so miserable 
a work would bring dishonour on its maker. It is 
impossible for us to know whence we come, and what 
inferior demi-urge bestowed on us motion and being. 
The mystery of our origin eludes all our search and is 
wrapt in impenetrable darkness ; we can only be silent 
in the consciousness of our misery. t Let the pagan 
please himself with the imagination that his soul has 
wings to soar into the eternal light, t The Christian 
nourishes no such idle fancies ; he well knows that he 
would have continued to grovel in the mire, and would 
have finally sunk into it altogether, but for the miracle 
of grace. The pagan thinks to enter the palace of the 

* "Adv. Gentes," II. 30-32. f Ibid., II. 50-63. 

" Vos alas 
(Ibid., II. 33.) 



620 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Most High as he enters his own house ; the Christian 
waits to be gathered into the dust of the ground. Thus 
does Arnobius blend together truth and error, and even 
heresy, for his notions of the creation bear the clear 
impress of Gnosticism. Nothing is more just than to 
magnify grace, nothing is more false than to set it in 
absolute opposition to nature, as is done by our apologist ; 
for, by reducing man to a condition truly like that of the 
beasts, he does away with the possibility of any appeal 
to conscience. Christianity is then merely an authori- 
tative interference with the moral life, for which no 
preparation has been made, and which deals with an 
utterly degraded being, who is dragged by terror to the 
foot of the cross. 

The conclusion of the whole of this portion of the 
Apology is an unlimited scepticism. Man has within 
him nothing divine ; he has no power, therefore, to 
recognise the divine without him. He is utterly impo- 
tent to rise to any truth of a higher order. " Let us 
respect," says Arnobius, " the mystery of causes. Is 
there any truth, clear, transparent, evident, for which 
the human mind has such a deep reverence that it will 
not attempt to disprove or dissipate it, out of mere 
love of contradiction ? Is there any error so patent 
that no one is found ready to uphold it by plausible 
argument ?"* 

Arnobius makes large use, in support of his theory, 
of the diversity of human opinions. " All these various 
opinions," he says, "cannot be true, but it is not possi- 
ble to discover on which side is the error, so powerfully 
is each sustained by argument. And yet not only do 

* " Suis omnia relinquimus causis. Quid est enim quod humana 
ingenia labefactare, dissolvere studio contradictionis non audeant?" 
("Adv. Gentes,"II, 56.) 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 62I 

these opinions differ from each other, but they are self- 
contradictory. Such would not be the case if human 
curiosity could attain to anything certain, or if after 
having, as it is believed, discovered anything certain, it 
could obtain universal assent to it. It is the height of 
presumption to pretend to possess any certainty or to 
aspire to it, since truth itself can be refuted, or that 
may be accepted as real, which has no existence, as in 
cases of mental hallucination. It is fitting that thus it 
should be. We have only mere human faculties with 
which to appreciate and measure things divine ; we have 
nothing divine' within us." * Arnobius speaks not only 
of the incapacity of human reason to grasp and perfectly 
comprehend infinite truth ; he does not, like Pascal, 
claim a place for the moral faculties in the examination 
of a religion, which speaks primarily to the heart and 
conscience. To do this would be to accept the grand 
method of the Alexandrine Fathers, and so far from 
such a course being open to the charge of scepticism, 
its initial act is one of generous trust in human nature ; 
it widens the arena of the discussion, and calls in the 
evidence not only of one set of faculties, but of man's 
whole nature. Arnobius repudiates in toto all such 
evidence ; he not only denies the competence of the 
testimony thus rendered, but he declines it altogether; 
not in reason nor in conscience, nor in the heart 
will he recognise any divine element, which may serve 
as a touchstone in the matter of religion. If there is 
no harmony between man and truth, we maintain there 
is no point of moral contact between man and the 

* " Quod utique non fieret, si certum aliquid tenere curiositas 
posset humana . . . Inanissima igitur res est, tanquam scias ali- 
quid promere aut velle scire contendere . . . Et merito res ita est. 
Non enim divina divinis, sed rationibus pendimus et commetimur 
humanist (" Adv. Gentes," II. 57.) 



622 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Gospel, and the only appeal possible to it is to the 
senses, since none can reach the soul. Recourse must 
then be had to prodigies, in order to fascinate by a 
marvellous spectacle this wholly animal creature. The 
work may be accomplished by authoritatively crushing 
all resistance as with brute force, but not one step 
would even then be gained towards conviction or serious 
belief. Instead -of a living soul, Christianity would 
have made conquest of but a dead soul, which would 
be incapable of negativing error, and would be con- 
vinced of but one thing, its own incapacity to discover 
truth. It would carry into the religion of Christ that 
scepticism, which unwise apologists have taken so much 
pains to instil into it. The curse and chastisement of 
sceptical tendencies enlisted in the service of religion, 
is that they perpetuate themselves and do not cease 
at the bidding of those who have gained their purpose 
by them. Within the Church, as without it, they 
destroy the very faculty of faith, and with it the 
soul which has harboured them. The example of the 
first apologist, who relied upon these false and fatal 
aids, well proves the perils of such a method. 

It is, indeed, startling to examine the proofs upon 
which Arnobius builds up the edifice of the Christian 
faith. It was not enough to make a heap of ruins, and 
to pile wreck upon wreck in order to find a solid foun- 
dation. A positive demonstration was also needed, and 
Arnobius has no other argument to present but that of 
miracle. This is with him the sole guarantee of cer- 
tainty. He has trampled down the spiritual nature of 
man ; there is, therefore, only the bodily eye left, to 
which he can address himself. Any appeal to con- 
science would be a mockery on the part of an apologist 
who does not even admit man to be at the head of the 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 623 

animal creation ; he has then but one recourse — to rely 
on the testimony of the senses, and this he does not 
fail to do. " You," he says to the pagans, "may believe 
in Plato, in Numenius, or in whom you will; we, for our 
part, have given our confidence to Jesus Christ. We 
can render a far better reason for our attachment to 
His person, than you can for your belief in philosophy. 
We have been won to Him by His glorious works, by 
the effects of His great power displayed in His most 
divine miracles. These miracles constrain us to believe 
that He was more than man.* What are the miracles 
which have won your allegiance to your philosophers, 
and have led you to believe in them rather than in 
Jesus Christ ? Can you cite one saying of theirs which 
has proved itself efficacious ? Have they ever been 
known with a word of power, I say not to still the 
storm of the sea or the rage of the tempest, to restore 
sight to the blind or to give sight to those who were 
blind from their birth, to call back the dead to life, or 
cure inveterate diseases; but to do far easier things than 
these — to cure by their simple word of command the 
smallest tumour or scab, or to draw a pricking thorn 
out of a man's hand ? We do not call in question the 
soundness of their morals or their great learning ; we 
know well the abundant eloquence of their language, 
we know that they can link syllogisms closely together, 
and can ably draw their inductions. But what comes 
of all these acquirements? No enthymemes, no syllo- 
gisms, no, not all the logic in the world can assure us 
that they know the truth, or that they are worthy of 

* "Ac nos quidem in illo secuti haec sumus : opera ilia magnifica 
potentissimasque virtutes, quas variis edidit exhibuitque miraculis, 
quibus quivis posset ad necessitatem credulitatis adduci, etjudicare 
fideliter, non esse quas fierent hominis, sed divinse alicujus atque 
incognitas potestatis/' ("Adv. Gentes," II. 11.) 



624 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

such entire confidence that we may accept from them 
that which we cannot comprehend. The palm here 
must be given, not to eloquence, but to the argument 
of miracles accomplished." * 

Thus, according to Arnobius, the clearest demonstra- 
tion cannot weigh against such evidence as the cure of 
a tumour. Fanatical adherence to the external and 
contempt of the spiritual, can be carried to no greater 
length.. He clings almost passionately to this sole 
proof, and enlarges upon it indefinitely. The picture 
drawn by him of the Saviour's miracles is over- 
coloured and in extremely bad taste ; the description of 
the diseases healed by the Divine Master is so crudely 
realistic that it excites disgust. It is easy to imagine the 
use that might be made by an African rhetor like Arno- 
bius, of the loathsome disease of the leper. " There has 
been a man among us," he says, "who by a word cured 
thousands of sick persons ; His voice alone calmed the 
angry waves of the sea, and the stormy winds obeyed His 
command. There has been a man among us who walked 
dryshod in the deep furrows of the sea, and planted His 
foot on the crest of the astonished waves ; nature was 
His docile instrument." t The multiplication of the 
loaves, the healing of the demoniacs, the resurrection 
of the dead, are described in an inflated style, that 
imparts a legendary hue to the Gospel narratives, 
which in their simplicity are so beautiful. That which 
Arnobius especially admires in the miracles, is the 
manifestation of a power superior to natural order, 
which sports with the laws of matter, and makes them 
subservient to its pleasure, which breaks the sequence 

* Personarum contentio non est eloquentiae viribus scd gestorum 
operum virtute pendenda." (-" Adv. Gentes," II. 11.) 
t Ibid., I. 45. 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 625 

of ordinary natural laws, and manifests its divine 
sovereignty.* Arnobius endeavours to place the reality 
of these miracles beyond dispute. He adduces three 
proofs. The testimony of the apostles is the first 
guarantee of the Gospel miracles; they were themselves 
the witnesses of the events they record, and they are'the 
more worthy to be believed that they also wrought the 
same prodigies. t The second testimony appealed to is 
that of mankind ; yes, of that incredulous race of man, 
which could not withstand evidence clearer than the sun. 
The Gospel can show over the whole world thousands 
of adherents gained by the power of the truth.]: If the 
first Christians had not themselves wrought dazzling 
miracles in the sight of the pagans, converts would not 
have hazarded their lives for the sake of a decried 
doctrine. § It was not possible that all these prodigies 
should be committed to writing ; many have been pre- 
served by oral tradition, which are not recorded in our 
sacred books. As to these sacred books themselves, 
they bear in their very roughness and inexactness the 
stamp of truthfulness, || and they remove any lingering 
doubt from the mind. The testimony of Scripture is 
therefore the third guarantee for the miraculous events 
which are the basis of faith. If 

Arnobius, with strange inconsistency, concludes his 
book with bitter reflections on the unbelief of man- 
kind. But if it be" true that man is by nature no higher 
than the brutes, and that there is nothing divine ' in 
him, it is very excusable that he should feel far more 
keenly physical sufferings than moral maladies, and 
should be more eager to find a physician for the body 
* " Adv. Gentes," I. 47. 

+ " Qui ea conspicati sunt fieri, testes optimi. (Ibid., I. 54.) 
'I " Et incredulum illud genus humanum." (Ibid.) 
§ Ibid. I. 55. || Ibid., I. 58, 59. H Ibid., I. 52, 



626 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

than for the soul. The work of the spiritual physician 
must be, indeed, rather to create souls as it were, than 
to heal them, since they have no real existence, if 
they are not immortal in their essence, and before the 
coming of the physician have no part in the higher 
life. In fact, the creation of man is, on Arnobius's 
theory, effected in two acts, separated by a vast 
interval. The clay of which his bodily organism is 
formed was fashioned in the beginning of the world, 
but the breath of the divine life was only communi- 
cated to him at the appearing of Christ. It cannot 
be strange that such a mere creature of clay should 
have felt no .thrill of joy or expectation at the drawing 
near of the Son of God, that He should have owned 
no attraction in His person, and should have rejected 
Him as not adapted to his nature. The lower is 
man's origin, the more excusable is his unbelief; for 
in the realm of morals pre-eminently does the maxim 
hold : Noblesse oblige. No one ever dreams of reproach- 
ing the brute creation with their insensibility to the 
presence of the Incarnate Word. And if man is but 
another animal, he may justly claim a similar exemp- 
tion from blame. Thus the apologists who dishonour 
humanity, teach anything but a lesson of humility. 
They degrade and reassure it in the same breath, 
and alienate it from Christianity alike by the scathing 
brand they set upon it, and by 'the excuses with 
which they furnish it. This melancholy school of 
apologists condemns itself, since it ends by compro- 
mising that which it aims to defend. As we read 
Arnobius, we could almost imagine again and again 
that we were listening to the words of Celsus, so 
near does he approach to the great scoffer, in his 
depreciation of human nature. He seems like an ad- 



BOOK III. — THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 627 

vocate who has mistaken his brief, and by the most 
singular inadvertence has taken up the cause of the 
adverse party. It is not difficult to foretell the issue 
of such strange proceedings as these on the part of 
the defenders of Christianity. 

Unhappily, Arnobius writes at the close of the heroic 
age of the Church, on the eve of the establishment 
of Christianity as the imperial and official religion, 
under which every evil tendency would be fostered, 
and the sword placed at the service of the new religion. 
Man, as Arnobius conceived of him, despoiled of his 
native dignity, without the independence springing 
from an inalienable divine relationship, was the fit 
subject, or rather the docile slave, required by the 
religious and political despotism, which was about to 
lay its heavy yoke upon the Church and the world. 
Mankind thus regarded was nothing better than inert 
matter, malleable clay, to be wrought upon by the 
twofold tyranny, of which the reign began with the' 
Eastern Empire of Constantine and his successors. 
The psychological system of Origen and Tertullian 
would not have subserved the ends of spiritual tyranny, 
for under the influence of that great school, conscience 
rose up invincible against every aggression, in the 
strength of its God-given freedom and right. 



NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS. 



Note A. 

On the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians . 

Hcefele ("Prolegom.," p. 36, 38) asserts that the Epistle to the Corin- 
thians must have been written immediately after the death of Peter and 
Paul. He grounds his opinion on the following passage : "EXOwfiev iwl 
rovg ZyyiGTa ytvofikvovQ d9\r]rag. ("Epist. ad Corinth.," v.) But it is 
impossible to determine exactly what Clement intended by 'iyyiara. It is 
evident that, compared with the saints of the old covenant, of whom 
Clement also speaks, the apostles are very little removed from him. The 
description of the Jewish worship (c. xl. and xli. ) seems, in Hcefele's opinion, 
to imply that the Temple had not yet been destroyed ; but Clement 
might perfectly well be referring to the Levitical worship described in the 
Scriptures, although that worship had already ceased to be offered. The 
description of the persecution, the same writer holds to refer to the 
persecution under Nero. But Clement may well have been speaking in 
this passage of all the persecutions of the first century, and calling them 
rapidly to mind. (See Ritschl, " Altcatholische Kirche," p. 286.) 

The objections to the date suggested by us seem, therefore, in no way 
conclusive. 

On the other hand, in favour of that date, there are abundant reasons 
in the letter itself. The Church of Corinth has already a considerable past 
history. ("Epist. ad Corinth.," i.) Many of the elders appointed by the 
apostles are dead (c. xliv.) The rest are advanced in age. The death of 
Peter and Paul is, however, placed in that generation ; that is to say, 
within the last thirty years. All this points to the apostolic age. (Helgen- 
feld, "Apostoliche Vaster," p. 83.) 

The testimonies of the Fathers in favour of the high antiquity of the 
Epistle of Clement, are many and weighty. We mention only the prin- 



63O THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

cipal: Irenseus, "Adv. Hseres.," iii. 83; Clement of Alexandria, 
" Stromat.," i. 7 ; Origen, " De Principiis, ii. 3 ; Eusebius, "H. E.," III. 
xvi. (See the passages in extenso in Cotelier. ) 

The spuriousness of the second epistle of Clement is now put beyond a 
doubt. Eusebius, who is the first to mention it, says that the elders made 
nouse of it: "On firjCe tovq apxaiovg avry Kexpiipivovg la/tar. ("H. E.," III. 
xxxviii.) Neither St. Jerome nor Photius allude to it. 



Note B. 

On the Letters of Ignatius. 

No subject has given rise to more discussion than this. An entire 
volume would be needed to deal with it fully ; we can only very briefly give 
our reasons in favour of the authenticity of the three letters of Ignatius in 
the Syriac translation. Let us first touch on the historical side of the 
question. In the fifth century there were extant, first, eleven, and soon after 
fifteen letters in Latin alone, said to be by Ignatius ; * the first eleven 
letters shortly appeared in Greek. Bishop Usher discovered in 1644 two 
Latin MSS., one at Cambridge, which contained the seven letters of 
Ignatius mentioned by Eusebius, in a much more concise form. Isaac 
Vossius, two years laters, found the Greek text of this same edition of the 
letters of Ignatius, with the exception of the Epistle to the Romans, which 
Ruinart read in 1698, in a MS. at Paris, containing the "Acts of the 
Martyrdom of Ignatius." Here, then, were two texts of his epistles — the 
one long and diffuse, the other much more condensed. The latter did not 
seem of unquestionable authority, and the illustrious Daille set himself to 
call in question the genuineness of the seven letters mentioned by Eusebius. f 
Plis book is a masterpiece of criticism ; in it he displays true genius, and 
discovers for himself some of the most skilful methods of modern criticism. 
He handles the internal evidence in a manner really remarkable ; he 
dwells on the style and the history of doctrine and heresy, as well as on the 
sentiments of the writer, in order to prove with equal vigour and logic, 
the impossibility of ascribing to Ignatius the letters which bear his name. 
He has himself well defined his critical method thus : " Ne quid scriberet 

* The names of these epistles are : to the Trallians, to the Magnesians, 
to the Church of Tarsus, to the Christians of Philippi, of Philadelphia, of 
Smyrna, of Antioch, of Ephesus, and of Rome ; the letters to Polycarp, and to 
Nero ; two letters to St. John,, an epistle to the Virgin, and lastly the letter 
to Maria Cassabolita. All these are found in the second volume of Cotelier. 

f Johannis Dallsei, " De Scriptis quae sub Dyonisii areopagitae et Ignatii 
nominibus circumferuntur. " Libri duo. Geneva, 1666. 



LETTERS OF IGNATIUS. 63I 

quod non ad Christianam fidem constituendam et ad pietatem confirmandam 
utile conditum, etiam ut ea diceret quae ad proprium Ignatii ingenium, 
mores, institua, facta actaque quam proxime accideret" (p. 432). 

Daille clearly establishes that Ignatius could not have combated in the 
year 107 heresies which had no definite existence till the middle of the 
second century, nor have given expression to the theory, of an episcopal 
monarchy, at a period when it is notorious that the identity of the bishop 
and the elder was still maintained. The error of the learned critic con- 
sists in not having distinguished with sufficient clearness between the two 
texts attributed to Ignatius. Bishop Pearson replied in a voluminous 
work entitled " Vindicice epistolarum sancti Ignatii ;" * in his work he 
displays both science and resolute purpose, as he follows his adversary step 
by step. After a very long discussion of the testimony of the Fathers, he 
proceeds to the internal evidence ; he makes incredible efforts to trace back 
to the commencement of the second century the heresies and episcopal notions 
of the third. After this introductory controversy, the disputants divided 
into two theological camps. While Neander expressed a prudent doubt, 
Rothe lent his extensive learning and his great talent to the cause defended by 
Pearson. (See the passage devoted to the epistles of Ignatius in the 
"Anfenge der Christ. Kirche.") The Tubingen school endeavoured to 
show the spuriousness of the letters of Ignatius, in order to support its own 
favourite propositions. (Schwegler, " Xachapost. Zeitalt.," ii. 159.) The 
whole controversy was revived by the discover)' made in 1839 by Tattam, 
in a monastery of the desert of Xitri, of three Syriac manuscripts, con- 
taining the Epistles to Polycarp, that to the Romans, and that to the 
Ephesians, in a very concise form. Another Syriac manuscript, discovered 
in 1847, reproduces precisely the same text. These discoveries, edited by 
Cureton, were published.! Bunsen issued in Greek the three letters of the 
Syriac edition in his " Antenicaena." + While Hcefele, on the part of the 
Catholics, § and Baur || and Helgenfeld, *~ on the part of the Tubingen school, 
dispute the authenticity of the Syrian text, Bunsen,** Ritschl,ff and 
Lepsius, XX defend it by very weighty arguments. A young Genevese theo- 
logian, M. Pierre Vaucher, published, in 1856, a very learned treatise on this 
subject. To us, however, it seems to have the effect of singularly weakening 
the arguments brought forward by the advocates of the genuineness of the 

* Oxford edition, 1652, second volume. The same work is inserted in 
Cotelier's second volume. 

t " Corpus Ignatianum." W. Cureton, London, 1849. 

j "Antenicaena," I. 43-53. 

§ " Patrum Apost. Opera," third edition, p. 58. 

|| "Die Ignatianischer Briefe und ihre neuesten Kritiker." 

^[ " Apostohsche Vseter," p. 274-279. 
** " Ignatius von Antiochien und seine Zeit." Bunsen, 1847. 
ft " ALtcatholische Kirche," p. 418. 
jj "Zeitschrift fur die hhtorische Theologie," 1856. First edition. 



632 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Syriac text.* For our own part we are fully convinced, on the following 
grounds, that Cureton has given us the genuine Ignatius. 

1st. We remark that prior to Eusebius (" H. E.," III. xxxiv.) no evidence 
can be brought forward from the Fathers, in support of a single passage of 
the ancient Greek text of Ignatius. Irenseus ("Adv. Hgeres.," v. 28) 
quotes a passages from the Epistle to the Romans, which is found in the 
two editions of Ignatius (Siroc elfii 9eov). Origen cites a passage from the 
Epistle to the Ephesians, which is in the Syriac ("E\a9e rbv dpxovra rev 
aiivvogi] irapQzvia, "Homilia," VI., "InLuc."), and this other passage from 
the Epistle to the Romans, which also occurs in the Syriac : " Meus autem 
amor crucifixos est." (" Prolog, in Cantic. cantic") Whatever Pearson may 
say, it cannot but appear unaccountable that Irenseus, who is so glad to 
strengthen his position by the testimony of his predecessors, should not 
have cited the passages in which Ignatius opposes the same heretics as he 
himself, if those passages had been before his eyes. 

2nd. A comparison of the shortest Greek text with the Syriac, is in 
itself sufficient to prove the priority of the latter. So far from the Syriac 
having the incoherent character of an unintelligent extract, as Helgenfeld 
asserts, it is full of force and manly vigour, and if it is not free from 
obscurity, that is no sufficient ground for rejecting it. Lepsius gives a 
detailed comparison of the two texts, which seems to enable us to lay our 
finger on the system of the interpolator. Let the more extensive Greek 
text be studied in Cotelier (ii. 451-28); let it be compared with the 
abridged Greek text published by Vossius, and the same relation will bo 
perceived between them as between the Greek of Vossius and the Syriac. 
Let the Epistle to the Ephesians, for example, be compared in the text of 
Vossius with the same Epistle in the Syriac. In the one all is simple, 
broad, full of restrained power ; the other is lax and diffuse. Thus, in 
the Syriac, Ignatius contents himself with expressing his gratitude to the 
Ephesians for sending to him their bishop (c. i.), while in the Greek we have 
five chapters making use of the occasion to lay down the most monarchical 
theories of episcopacy (c. iii. to viii. ) The Syriac subsequently gives some 
earnest exhortations, full, at the same time, of firmness and gentleness. In 
the Greek these are drowned in fierce invectives against the heretics 
(cviii. ix. ), and in prolix dissertations. But the interpolation is still more 
palpable at the end of the Epistle. The Syriac simply speaks of the star 
which announced the reign of the Saviour. The Greek develops this 
theme after the manner of the Apocryphal Gospels. "A star," it says, 
"shone in the heavens, surpassing in glory every other star; its light was 
ineffable, and its strangeness threw men into consternation. All the other 
stars, with the sun and moon, formed a train to this star ; it cast its light 
over all. ("Ad Eph.," xix.) Such a passage as this bears the unmistake- 

* See also M. Reville's articles in the journal, " Le Lien." 1856. 



LETTERS OF IGNATIUS. 633 

able mark of a fabrication. A comparison of trie two other Greek letters 
with the Syriac gives the same result. As to the four supposed letters, they 
are composed on the system of the interpolations of the three genuine letters, 
and give the same tokens of the hand of the forger. (The analysis of these 
may be seen in Bunsen's " Ignatius und seine Zeit," p. 64.) 

3rd. Considered from a doctrinal point of view, the Syriac bears the 
character of far greater antiquity than the Greek. If Lepsius goes too far 
in imputing a sort of patripassianism to the former, it is nevertheless certain 
that the manner in which it speaks of Jesus Christ leads to the supposition 
that the author was ignorant of the problems of Christology started by 
theologians from the middle of the second century, with reference to the 
person of the Redeemer. The Greek text is incomparably more exact and 
more dogmatic. Thus, while the Syriac simply says ("Ad Eph. ," i. ) 
that He who was invisible became visible for our salvation, the Greek enters 
into an expansion of the doctrine, such as the following : "There is one 
sole physician, clothed in human flesh, and yet spiritual, made and not 
made {yu'trog %at dy&verog), God existing in man, true life in death, born of 
Mary and of God, once subject to suffering, now impassible, Jesus Christ 
our Lord." ("Ad Eph." vii., comp. "Ad Trail.," ix. ; "Ad Smyrn.," i.; 
"Ad Magnes.," xi. ) The heresies indicated in a very general manner in 
the Syriac, are characterised in the minutest detail in the Greek text, which 
designates them under the unmistakeable traits of Gnostic docetism. Now, 
this docetism did not assume such definite form till a far later period. 
Cerinthus did not deny the humanity of Jesus Christ ; he only denied that 
the humanity was united with the divinity. But the docetes spoken of in 
the Greek epistles, regard that humanity as nothing more than a semblance.* 
We may add that the tone of the Syriac, in speaking of the heretics, is 
moderate, while that of the Greek is bitter and violent. The Greek goes 
even so far as to speak of the heretics as wild beasts in the letter to the 
Ephesians (c. vii. ) ; f the Syriac uses far different language in the Epistle to 
Polycarp. "If thou lovest only the good disciples," it says, "thou art 
wanting in grace. Bear gently with the most evil." % 

4th.i There is a great difference between the Syriac and the Greek with 
regard to ecclesiastical organisation, and we discover here (but in favour 
of the Syriac) that which Daille called the palmarium argumenhan — the 
triumphant argument. In fact, it is not necessary to prove that tha Greek 
establishes a marked difference between the elders and the bishop, and gives 
full expression to the episcopal theory. It exalts the office izx above the person. 
The bishop, according to the Greek, is invested with an apostolic character 
(iv a.7rooTo\iK<p ^apa/cri'ipi, subscription of the letter to the Trallians). He 
is positively the vicar of God and of Jesus Christ. (" Ad Magnes.," iii. vi.) 

* Asyovaiv ro doxuv ntTcovQivai clvtov. ("Ad Smyrn.," ii.) 
f 'Qc Orjpia. J Tovq yoifioripovg vTCOTaaot. ("Ad Poly.," i.) 

41 



634 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

To obey the bishop is to obey the will of God. (" Eph.," iii. iv.) It is he 
who directs the worship. ("Ad Smyrn.," viii.) We are brought into the 
presence of a fully developed episcopal organisation. It is impossible to 
reconcile such language with that of Clement of Rome, of Polycarp, or of 
the "Shepherd of Hermas." In the Syriac, nothing of the sort appears. 
Bunsen and Lepsius justly remark, that if a larger measure of influence is 
accorded to the bishop in the Syriac text than in the other writings of the 
Apostolic Fathers, it is not the influence so much of the office as of the 
personal character of the bishop. The first two chapters of the Epistle to 
Polycarp show how strenuously Ignatius urges the bishop to the fulfilment 
of his duties. In the Epistle to the Romans (c. iv. ) we see that Ignatius 
wrote at a time when the episcopal theory was still in embryo, and only a 
certain degree of precedence was accorded to one of the elders above the 
rest ; a long period had to elapse before this germ of episcopacy developed 
into the complete form it presents in the Greek. 

5th. The interpolations of the Greek text are very evident in the legen- 
dary additions made to the Syriac in the details of Ignatius' journey, and 
of the feelings of the martyr. The Syriac simply shows us the Bishop 
Onesimus by the side of Ignatius ("Ad Eph.," i. ), joined afterwards by 
some deputies from the churches ("Rom.," xx.) According to the Greek 
text, he presides over regular assemblies of the Church, and conducts 
formal discussions. (" Philadelphia," vii. viii.) The heretics dispute with 
him. ("Ad Smyrn.," vii.) The Syriac, at the close of the letter to 
Polycarp, speaks in very simple terms of a Christian who was sent to 
Antioch, who is probably the successor of Ignatius. The Greek (c. vii. vii. ) 
conjures up a whole series of ambassadors, appointed by the Churches to 
communicate with one another. Even Ignatius himself does not appear to 
us in the same light in the Syriac and the Greek. The former shows him 
blending gentleness with firmness ; the latter represents him as a fanatic and 
violent man ; it exaggerates his humility, and makes him say, in his Epistle 
to the Romans, that he is ashamed to be called a Christian. ( " Rom.," vii. ) 
From a comparison of the two texts, the priority of the Syriac is to us 
established beyond a doubt. * 

Baur and Helgenfeld pretend to discover in the letters of Ignatius, even 
in the Syriac text, the impress of Gnosticism, and they cite, in support of 
this opinion, the doctrine therein contained on the nature of angels. They 
bring forward the expression apxr)v rov Kocr/xov (" Ad Eph.," iii.), but 
this is evidently an expression taken from Scripture. (See 2 Cor., iv. 4.) 
The word irXrfpojua (the subscription of the Epistle to the Ephesians) brings 
to mind Col. i. 19. The Syriac does not on any of these points go beyond 
the Epistle to the Ephesians, the genuineness of which we have already 
proved. 



AUTHENTICITY OF " PHILOSOPHOUMENA." 635 

Note C 

On the Authenticity of 'the " Philosophoumena." * 

ever diverse may be the results arrived at by criticism "with, regard to 
the " Philosophoumena,'' one thing at least is definitely established — the 
: f the document. All the writers who have taken up the 
::t ; :ion are una is their decision that the writer lived in the third 

century, and that consequently he had direct knowledge of the facts he 
narrates. It is certain that Theodoret had before him at least the last two 
ks of the " Philosophoumena, " He borrowed largely from them in his 
' ' History of Heresies !; (Theodoret, i, 14-19 ; ii. 7), especially with reference 
to the heresy of Callisthus Clii, 5 , 

We are not satisfied with affirming merely the antiquity of the document. 
We are prepared to maintain that it is really the work of St Hippolytus. 
Let us first call to mind the subjects treated in the "Philosophoumena," 
The first book, which we already possess in Pere de la Rue's edition of 
Origen, is a calm and methodical exposition of the principal philosophies of 
Greece. The author designs to establish that all the heresies had been 
derived by their founders from this source. The next book, which was the 
fourth of the complete work, is devoted to treating the widely spread errors 
: :" asti I : gy. Book V. makes us acquainted with the most ancient heresies, 
in which we may trace the as yet formless germ of Gnosticism. The sixth 
book continues the same subject, and preserves for us a valuable fragment of 
the writing :: Valentinus. The doctrine of Basilides, Marcion, Cerinthus, 
Tati : . M : ntanus, and other heretics is expounded in the seventh and eighth 
book. The ninth carries us into the heart of the Church of Rome, and in it 
the author's contest with the two Bishops, Zephyrinus and Callisthus, is vividly 

* We already possess an entire literature on this important subject. We 
quote the principal works or articles : 

" Hippolytus und seine Zeit," von Christian Carl Josias Bunsen, Leipsic, 
Brockhaus, 1852. The same book in English, second edition, 1854. 

" Hippotytus und CaQistus," von DceHioger, Regensburg, 1853. 

"Hippolytus und die Rcemischen Zeitgenosseru" Von Volkmar. Zurich, 

1855- 

St Hippolytus and the Church of Rome." Wordsworth, 1852. 

" Etude sur les nouveaux documents historiques emprunte's al'ouvrage recem- 
ment decouvert des Philosophoumena." Par M. I'Abbe Cruice. Chez Perisse 
freres. Paris, 18 5 3 

The text was first published by Mr. Milner, at Oxford, in 1851. M. I'Abbe 
Cruice published it in Paris : B 5 g with translation and commentaries. 

We may refer lastly to : 

Articles in the " Correspondant." By M. I'Abbe Freppel and by M. Ch. 
Lenormant. Paris, 1853. Pt 502-553. 

Articles by Baur — "Jahrbiicher." 1853. Parts 1 and 3, article by Geiseler 
— Studien und Critiken." 1853. Part 4, article by Jacobi — " Deutshe. Zeit« 
s:br::: [ ur.t 21 :lf: 



636 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

depicted. Lastly, the tenth book gives an epitome of the whole work, and 
concludes with a very beautiful confession of faith. Evidently the writer of 
the " Philosophoumena " is a man profoundly versed in ancient philosophy, 
and able to estimate with a full knowledge of cause and effect, the dogmatic 
differences of his day. He is also a man of sufficient independence of 
spirit to enter into controversy with the Bishop of Rome, and his confession 
of faith betokens a large and lofty intellect. We may add that his book 
constantly shows traces of the influence of Irenseus. It is evident that he 
has the work of Irenaeus before him. Now, if we compare all these indica- 
tions with that which we know from history about Hippolytus, we shall 
find we have made a great step towards the settlement of the question under 
debate. All the ecclesiastical writers who mention Hippolytus agree in 
praising his competence in matters of philosophy. We know that he wrote 
a book on Plato. We know further that he took especial cognisance of the 
heresies of his age, and that he was considered to be a disciple of Irengeus. 
The paschal cycle engraved upon his episcopal chair, proves his aptitude in 
treating the subject contained in the fourth book, for a very extensive 
acquaintance with astronomy was required for such a vigorous controversy 
with pagan astrology. Lastly, we learn from two verses of Prudentius, 
that it was in the memory of Christian antiquity that Hippolytus had a 
contest with the Bishop of Rome. Every indication which we can gather 
with reference to the author of the "Philosophoumena" from the work 
itself, applies perfectly to St. Hippolytus as he was known to us before the 
discovery of that valuable document. Surely there is here very substantial 
evidence, or at the least a very strong presumption, in support of our 
opinion. 

It may fairly be asked, however, whether there was no other Christian 
teacher in the third century to whom these characteristics might apply. 
Our adversaries have asserted that such is the case, and before going further 
we will dispose of their theories. Three names hav£ been mentioned, those 
of Origen, Caius, and Tertullian. Mr. Miller, the learned editor of the 
"Philosophoumena," and M. Charles Lenormant, support the first hypo- 
thesis. They do so on these grounds : that the manuscript bore the name 
of Origen ; that the first book was inserted by the Benedictines among his 
works ; and lastly, that the vast theological and philosophical learning of the 
doctor of Alexandria point to him as the author. We can well under- 
stand that it would be a great, satisfaction to the Roman Catholic Church if 
it couldbe established that Origen was the author of the " Philosophoumena," 
since in the estimation of that Church the authority of Origen as that of 
one accused of heresy, is nil. But this theory has so little to sustain it, 
that even Catholic writers like Doellinger and the Abbe Cruice have com- 
bated it with invincible arguments. The name of Origen, inserted in the 
margin of the manuscripts, proves absolutely nothing. We know what was 



AUTHENTICITY OF " PHILOSOPHOUMENA." 637 

ihe ignorance of the convent scribes ; nor is there any evidence that the 
copyist intended more than simply to refer to Origen one of the special 
opinions of the book. There arises, however, a more serious difficulty : the 
author of the " Philosophoumena " declares most positively that he was a 
bishop. * Now, Origen never was a bishop. The author makes a sojourn 
in Rome, and has charge of a Church in that city. Origen, on the testi- 
mony of Eusebius, only passed through Rome, f Finally, the doctrine of 
the writer differs completely from that of Origen on one main point. We 
know what importance Origen attached to the idea of the final restoration of 
all, and how strongly he denied eternal punishment. The author of the 
"Philosophoumena," on the contrary, affirms it categorically. £ 

Are the advocates of the second hypothesis more successful ? Was Caius 
the author of the " Philosophoumena ?" This is the opinion of Baur. He 
relies on the indirect testimony of Photius. ("Bibl. Cod.," 48.) The 
patriarch attributed to Caius a book "On the Universe." Now, the 
writer of the " Philosophoumena " claims the authorship" of a book on this 
subject ; and Baur draws the conclusion that Caius is the author of both. 
Photius himself, however, was careful to guard his assertion by saying he 
could not arrive at any certainty on this point of criticism. § More than 
this, the details which Eusebius gives us with reference to Caius are incom- 
patible with the compo#tion of the "Philosophoumena." Caius was an 
elder of the Church of Rome, under Zephyrinus and Callisthus. (Eusebius, 
" H. E.," II. xxv.) He is known to feave successfully opposed the 
Montanists. Is it conceivable that in all the heat of the conflict, he should 
have spoken of his adversaries with the calmness and brevity with which 
they are treated in the sixth book of the manuscript ? Eusebius asserts 
(" H. E.," II. xxviii.) that Caius went so far in his opposition to the Mon- 
tanists as to deny the authenticity of the Revelation, and to ascribe fts 
authorship to the heretic Cerinthus. Our writer, on the contrary, has no 
doubt of its apostolic character. || We hold it, then, to be impossible that 
Caius should have written the " Philosophoumena." 

A French theologian has hazarded, not without some hesitation, a third 
hypothesis, which has.no claim to detain us long. M. l'Abbe Cruice, now 
Bishop of Marseilles, who has brought out a new edition of the " Philoso- 
phoumena," with a commentary and a translation, suggests the name of 
Tertullian as the author of the manuscript. It would be, indeed, a boon to 
the defenders of the hierarchy, could they ascribe to the fiery teacher of 
Carthage, who became a heretic, the stern words of the ninth book. Callisthus 
would then appear as the representative only of moderation and wisdom, 
* Apx<-zpa~iLa-G "re icai fodacrKaXiag fiETixovreg. ("Phil.," p. 3.) 
f Ev9a ou ttoXv diarpiipag. (Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xiv.) 
J 'Ayy^Xiov KoXa^uiv bfxjxa ad jxkvov. (" Phil.," p. 39.) 
§ 0?>7rw /xoi yiyovtv tvdijXov. 
|j To uytovnvivfiahd rfjg A7roxaXv\peu>g luxxvvtjg ijXeyxe. ("Phil.," p. 258.) 



638 THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and Tertullian would still be the passionate tribune, whose eloquence might 
deserve admiration, but whose testimony was of no authority or weight. 
Unhappily this agreeable solution of the question presents some difficulties. 
First of all, supposing that Tertullian would have written in Greek, it 
would certainly not have been in comparatively correct Greek. Then, he 
would not have spoken of Montanism as heresy. He would not have 
treated philosophy with such lofty moderation. The writer, who in the fifth 
book of his " Prescriptions " has nothing but insults for the great philoso- 
phers of Greece, who cannot restrain his indignation, and who exclaims, 
Miserum Aristotelicem ! would not have set forth with so much calmness the 
opinions of the Aristotelians, and certainly he would not, in his peroration, 
have borrowed from Socrates the yvtJQi aeavrov. Again : he would 
certainly not have placed among the accusations brought against Callisthus, 
the introduction of second baptism (" Philo.," p. 291), after having himself 
ardently advocated it in a special treatise. M. l'Abbe Cruice discovers a 
certain analogy between the views of Tertullian and those of the unknown 
author of the " Philosophoumena " as to the person of Jesus Christ ; but 
who does not know that, before the Council of Nicaea, the subordination of 
the Son to the Father was very generally acknowledged. It might as well 
be asserted that Tertullian and Origen belonged to the same school. But 
even if we had not all these grounds for rejecffrg the hypothesis of M. 
l'Abbe Cruice, it would suffice to read a couple of pages of Tertullian and 
then any portion, however short, of the " Philosophoumena." Tertullian 
might almost be said to put his name to every line of his writings. The 
whole man appears in every page, with all his passion, power, indignation, 
and sublime imagination, perpetually pitting thought against thought, word 
against word, in the sharp conflict of antitheses. We find nothing like this 
in the somewhat slow and careful method of the author of the " Philoso- 
phoumena." In fact, internal evidence must be for ever abandoned if this 
manuscript is really from the pen of Tertullian. 

With these weighty objections to Origen, Caius, and Tertullian, it seems to 
us difficult to controvert the opinion we have advanced. Is there any reason for 
asserting, as does M. l'Abbe Cruice, that if Tertullian is not the author, the 
book must have been composed by some unknown heretic ? We should 
then need to inquire how it was that a man of such power, should have been 
undiscovered at Rome in the third century ? Where could this anonymous 
teacher have hidden himself, who knew so intimately well the Church of 
his time, and who had mental powers so distinguished and so highly culti- 
vated ? It must be confessed that he made use of a treacherous art, since 
he so perfectly identified himself with St. Hippolytus, as to succeed in 
thinking his identical thoughts and writing with his pen. 

We have three conclusive proofs of the authenticity of the document 
to advance. 



AUTHENTICITY OF " PHILOSOPHOUMENA." 639 

1st. The ancient historians of the Church declare that St. Hippolytus 
Wrote a book on heresies. Eusebius says distinctly that this book was 
against all the heresies.* Epiphanius entirely agrees with him on this 
point, f He places Hippolytus in the same rank with Clement of Alexan- 
dria, and Irenaeus. 

2nd. Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, says in his " Bibliotheca," 
c. cxxiv., that he was acquainted with a writing of St. Hippolytus on the 
heresies. He gives a tolerably complete description of this writing, and 
one is struck, on reading it, with the differences and analogies existing 
between the work thus described and the " Philosophoumena. " The differ- 
ences, however, are but superficial ; the analogy of the subject-matter is 
evident. The subject is the same. Both books treat of the heresies of the 
early ages. If the number of the heresies mentioned does not exactly 
agree, there is yet no shadow of doubt that in both works they were 
arranged in the same manner, in the same order, and with the same 
arguments. Lastly, Photius speaks of the book which he is analysing as 
standing in the same relation of dependence to the work of Iren?eus, which 
is patent in our manuscript. So far we have discovered no difference be- 
tween the two writings, except that in the number of the heresies. Photius 
suggests a more serious difficulty when he speaks of the treatise on the 
heresies as a little book {j3i(3\icdpiov). The " Philosophoumena," originally 
consisting of ten books, certainly is something more than a little book. M. 
de Bunsen attempts, in a rather artificial manner, to establish the identity of 
the " Philosophoumena " with the book known to Photius. For ourselves, we 
share the opinion of Doellinger and Wordsworth. We suppose that there 
were two writings of Hippolytus on the same subject ; the one more exten- 
sive, which would be the " Philosophoumena," the other an abridgment of 
the same, which would be the fiij3\icdpiov of Photius. This is not a mere 
baseless supposition. There is a solid foundation for it in our manuscript 
itself, for we read in the introduction that the " author had already treated 
of the"Tarious heresies in a more concise manner. " £ Can there be any reason 
to doubt that this shorter treatise is precisely that referred to by Photius ? 
We know that Hippolytus wrote on the same heresies treated in the 
"Philosophoumena," that he did so in the same spirit — the spirit of 
Irenseus — and yet further, that he arranged them in the same order. The 
author of the " Philosophoumena," on his part, states that he had written a 
book on the same subject, but shorter. It is evident that this coincidence 
amounts to a proof. 

3rd. The statue of Hippolytus furnishes us with one last and still more 
decisive proof. We have said that the list of the works of the illustrious 

* IIpoc cnraoaq -de alpcche. (Eusebius, " H. E.," VI. xxii.) 

f " Heresies," xi. 33. 

J Qv kcu irakai ^trpi'wc rd l6yj.ia.Ta l^tQifiaTa. ("Phil," p. 2.) 



64O THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

teacher is engraved on his episcopal chair. Among them is one entitled, 
" On the Universe," Trspl tov ttcivtoq. Now, the author of the " Philoso- 
phoumena " states that he had written a treatise on the Universe, inpl tov 
Travrog. " Those who desire it," he says, " may find fuller developments 
of this subject in our treatise on the essence of the Universe."* The 
" Philosophoumena" tells us, then, that their author wrote a treatise on the 
Universe. This treatise on the Universe is placed in the list of the writings 
of Hippolytus inscribed on his statue. Is it not then patent that the 
" Philosophoumena " is his also? f 

The demonstration appears to us irresistible, and in the objections urged 
against it we see no real force. The silence of historians upon the internal 
crisis of the Church of Rome is not strange, if we remember that these 
writers all belonged to the Eastern Church, which was still of the most 
importance. Nor are they indeed entirely silent, for Theodoret speaks of 
the heresy of Callisthus. Then the crisis was of short duration. The 
martyrdom of Callisthus obliterated his faults. The disappearance of the 
writing of Hippolytus was not total. Theodoret was acquainted with a 
portion of it. We have confined ourselves to this question of the authen- 
ticity of the manuscripts, for we do not wish to avail ourselves, like our 
adversaries, of doubtful documents. 

* lUpi t7]q tov TravTog ovaiog. ( " Phil.," p. 334.) In opposition to this, is 
adduced the testimony of Photius, that this treatise on the Universe was by 
Caius ; but we have already seen in what vague and inconclusive terms he 
speaks on the subject. (See p. 18.) 

f We may allude to a few more of the objections urged by M. l'Abbe Cruice. 
Heasserts that the title I ! epi tov rcavTog is too vague to warrant the inference that 
it refers to the same work mentioned on the statue, especially as the title here 
is more complete, and contains an allusion to Plato. But how could a man so 
well versed as the author of the "Philosophoumena" in ancient philosophy, 
have spoken of the essence of the universe without taking up and opposing 
Platonist ideas, of which he treats so much throughout his work? M. Cruice 
lays especial stress in his argument, on the differences between the writing 
spoken of by Photius and our manuscript ; but our supposition, that there were 
two analogous writings of the same author, obviates these objections. M. l'Abbe 
Cruice finally urges what he describes as the poverty of the book, In his view 
nothing but a miserable compilation. It is needless to discuss such an estimate 
as this. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



Abandoning the gods, The Chris- 
tians charged with, 151. 

Adrian, his policy towards the 
Christians, 102 ; the first apology- 
written in his reign, 103 ; his 
decree against Judaism, 104. 

Africa, Church in, 33. 

Africans, Character of the, 33 ; their 
religion, 34. 

Alexander united with Narcissus in 
the episcopate of Rome, 264. 

Alexander Severus, his early train- 
ing, 167 ; sets up a statue to Christ, 
168 ; prefers Christians to tavern- 
keepers, 169. 

Alexandria, persecutions at, under 
Severus, 158; under Decius, 178, 
184; the home of letters, 267; 
Church of, attached great impor- 
tance to symbols, 266 ; predis- 
posed to Gnosticism, 267 ; has 
many philosophers, 267; Chris- 
tian worship at, 285. 

Almsgiving, Cyprian on, 195. 

Ambrose, his connection with Ori- 
gen, 304. 

Ammonius Saccas, 299. 

Anicetus, bishop of Rome, 237. 

Antioch, Church of, 25, 26. 

Antoninus Pius, his character, 106 ; 
issues a decree favourable to 
Christianity, 113. 

Apologies of Christianity, first writ- 
ten, 103 ; of Clement, 540-566 ; 
Clement, the founder of, 565 ; of 
Justin Martyr, 107, 127-129; five 
presented to Marcus iVurelius, 124; 
of Melito, 124, 530; of Cyprian of 
Athenagoras, 125, 240; of Ter- 
tullian, 149, 150; of Arnobius, 
605-627; of Quadratus, 236; of 
Origen, 566. 

Apollinaris, bishop of Hieropolis, 
240. 



Apollonius of Tyana, his doctrine 
and disciples, 513 ; imitates 
Christ, 314 ; simply a magician, 
5i8. 

Apostates, sometimes only apparent, 
91 ; their inward agony, 92 ; some- 
times commit suicide, 93. . 

Apostle of cultivated Greece, Cle- 
ment, the, 562. 

Apostolic Fathers, great historic 
characters, 216. 

Aristides, one of the first apologists, 
236. 

Armenia, Church in, 27. 

Arnobius, his character and writings, 
438, 439 ; his Apology, 605-627. 

Attack on Christianity, The, 440-525. 

Athenagoras, Apology of, 125, 240. 

Aurelius, his character, 114; troubles 
in his reign, 115; drifts with the 
popular current, 116; secret of his 
antagonism to Christianity, 116, 
122; his ideal, 1 17; natural se- 
quence his sole divinity, 118; 
prejudice against the doctrine of 
redemption, 120; his pride, 121 ; 
his pantheism, 122. 

Aurelian declines to interfere on a 
religious question, 199. 

Beryl, bishop of Bostra, led back to 
the Faith, 323. 

Blandina, Martyrdom of, 132. 

Brahmins of the West, The Druids, 47. 

Breadth of view a source of appre- 
hension to the timid, 546. 

Britain receives Christianity, 53. 

Bourges, Church of, 52. 

Csecilius (of Minutius Felix) not con- 
sistent with himself, 444; ill ac- 
quainted with the doctrines of the 
Christians, 446; regards suffering 
as a curse, 448. 



642 



THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 



Csecilius the instrument of Cyprian's 
conversion, 417. 

Caius, the theologian, 366-370. 

Callisthus, leader of the hierarchical 
party, 301 ; his controversy with 
Hippolytus, 364 ; once a slave and 
defaulter, 370; his craftiness, 371; 
his death, 372. 

Captivity stimulates the courage of 
the Christians, 82. 

Caracalla, his character, 162; respite 
to the Church under, 162. 

Carthage, 34, 35 ; persecution at, 
185; pestilence in, 190; origin of 
the Church of, 36-38 ; its character, 

39- . . 

Carthaginians, Character of the, 36, 

374-378. 

Catechists, School of, 268. 

Celsus, Origen decides to reply to, 
326 ; his attack on Christianity ; 
475 ; his system, 476 ; sees the 
favourable points for attack, 478 ; 
his hatred, 479. 

Chapel preferred to a tavern, 169. 

Charges brought against the Chris- 
tians, 1 51-156. 

Christ, Statue of, set up by Severus, 
168. 

Christians, their position in the 
Roman Empire, 69; their rela- 
tions to pagan feasts, 70; their 
social relations, 70 ; public life, 
72 ; in war, 73-75 ; their family 
affection, 85 ; before the judgment, 
86-90 ; compelled to work in the 
mines, 196; become officers of the 
palace, 202; charges against, 
examined, 1 5 1- 1 57; accused of 
belonging to no nation, 491. 

Christianity in the second century, 
I, 2 ; influence of, 9 ; charges 
against, 9 ; its adaptation to the 
people, 12; systematic exposition 
of, 23 ; progress of, in Asia, 24 ; 
in Palestine, 25 ; in Iberia, 28 ; 
in Persia, 29; in India, 31 ; in 
Greece, 32; the attack on, 440- 
525 ; charged with showing a 
predilection for men of vicious 
lives, 492 ; objected to because 
not original, 496 ; the defence of, 



526-627 ; its glory that it is mind- 
ful of the destitute, 572; meets 
the true needs of the soul, 579 ; 
exalts the dignity of human 
nature, 583. 

Christian missions, Character and 
method of, I -24; remarkable suc- 
cesses of, 3 ; obstacles to, 4. 

Church, The, a missionary society, 
19; progress of, before the per- 
secution of Trajan, 98 ; heresy in, 
135 ; becomes prudent, 146 ; de- 
cline of, 178; re-admission into, 
181 ; enjoys repose under the 
thirty tyrants, 199; not composed 
entirely of outcasts, 573. 

Church, The, of Alexandria, its ori- 
gin, 36-38 ; its character, 39 ; dur- 
ing pestilence, 190; of Africa, 33; 
of Armenia, 27; of Britain, 53; 
of Bourges, 52 ; of Corinth, Cle- 
ment's letter to, 220; date of 
Epistle to Corinth," 629; of Ger- 
many, 54-65 ; of Greece, 32, 265 ; 
of Italy, origin of, 40 ; of Lyons, 
origin of, 41 ; affected by Mon- 
tanism, 255 ; of Palestine, favour- 
able to Origen, 315; of Rome, 
origin of, 40 ; composed of all 
classes, 41 ; of the Judaic type, 
238 ; an Apostolic Church, 256 ; 
Origen visits, 300, 301 ; of Spain, 
origin of, 39. 

Clement (of Rome) personally ac- 
quainted with the apostles, 218; 
his letter to the Church of Corinth, 
220-221, 629; his piety, 222. 

Clement (of Alexandria) the disciple 
of Pantamus, 272 ; his passion for 
philosophy, 273 ; his disinterest- 
edness, 275 ; his teaching, 276 ; 
his style, 277 ; his writings, 278 ; 
leaves Alexandria, 280 ; hi;j death, 
281 ; apology of, 540-566. 

Commodus, a tyrant to the Chris- 
tians, 134. 

Confessors, The, courage of, 94; 
their memory revered, 95, 96; Cy- 
prian's counsel to, 196. 

Conscience, Appeal should be made 
to, before the Scriptures, 596- 
598. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



643 



Constantine espouses the new reli- 
gion, 214. 

Cornelius congratulated on his fide- 
lity, 188, 189.. 

Crimes, infamous, The Christians 
charged with, 151. 

Cyprian (Bishop of Carthage), his 
vision, 177; his counsel to the 
confessors, 186; his answer to 
the pagan theory of the pestilence, 
190-192; declares himself a dis- 
ciple of Tertullian, 414; his father, 
415; his judgment upon his pagan 
life, 416; his conversion, 417; 
his joy on being admitted to the 
Church, 418; his writings, 421; 
raised to the bishopric, 422; the 
best representative of the hier- 
archical party, 424 ; his talent for 
governing, 424; his charity, 426; 
his affection and sagacity, 428; 
his eloquence, 430 ; his conflicts, 
432 ; warned of his end, 435 ; be- 
fore the tribunal, 437 ; beheaded, 
438. 

Decius, Persecution under, 176 ; 
decree of, 179. 

Decline of the Churches, 178. 

Decree of Antoninus Pius, 113; of 
Gallienus, 198; of Galerius, 213; 
of Valerian, 196; of Decius, an 
aggravation of Trajan's, 1 79. 

Defence of Christianity, 440-627. 

Demetrius recalls Origen from Cae- 
sarea, 309 ; takes violent measures 
against Origen, 3 1 1 ; his character, 

3H. 

Demons, The doctrine of, 498. 

Dioclesian, a profound politician, 
200; patronises new ideas, 201; 
his edict, 207 ; the fire in his 
palace, 209 ; issues three new 
edicts, 210 ; his wife and daughters 
compelled to sacrifice to the gods, 

211. 

Dionysius (Bishop of Alexandria), 
disciple of Origen, 342 ; his cha- 
racter, 343, 350 ; resists the Bishop 
of Rome, 348 ; his writings, 348. 

Dionysius (Bishop of Corinth), a 
representative of Catholicity, 239. 



Disabilities of the Christians, 77, 78. 

Discussions, Public, 22 ; in the open 
air, 23. 

Donatist dispute, Rise of the, 209. 

Dorotheus rises to the highest offices 
in the court, 202; strangled, 21 1. 

Dreams and visions common with 
the martyrs, 83. 

Druidism, 48 ; superior to Brahmin- 
ism, 50. 

Druids, The, the Brahmins of the 
West, 47 ; priesthood among the, 
49- 

Eastern Church, different from the 
Western, 43, 360. 
cclesi 
261. 

Edict of Gallienus, first of toleration, 
198; of Galerius, an amazing 
monument of history, 213; of 
Valerian, 196. 

Egypt, the land of magic and mys- 
tery, 141 ; Severus brought under 
the influence of the pviests of, 
141. 

Epiphanes slanders the reputation 
of" Origen, 318. 

Epistle of Clement to the Corin- 
thians, date of the (Note A), 629. 

Eusebius, his conduct during the 
pestilence at Alexandria, 350; 
raised to the See of Laodicea, 350, 

Fabinus, Bishop, his martyrdom, 

182, 183. 
Faith, in relation to reason and 

science, 549-554; not passive, 550; 

has a moral cause, 552 ; courts 

inquiry, 577, 578. 
Fall, The, rejected by Celsus, 500 ; 

implies a first estate of glory, 611. 
Fanaticism of the Montanists, 140. 
Fatalism, the foundation of Hellenic 

paganism, 462. 
Fathers of the Church in the second 

century, 216-260; the Apostolic, 

216-236; under the Antonines, 

236-260. 
Fathers of the Eastern Church, from 

end of second century to Constan- 

tine, 261-359. 



6 4 4 



THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 



Felix (Minutius), his writings, 367- 

442. 
First principles beyond reason, 557. 
Free inquiry defended, 547. 

Galerius, the recognised head of the 
pagan party, 203 ; his edict of 
toleration, 213. 

Gallienus issues the first edict of 
toleration, 198. 

Gallus, Persecution decreed by, 188. 

Gaul, Divisions of, 44 ; character of 
the people of, 45 ; Druidical wor- 
ship in, 46-48. 

Germany receives Christianity, 54 ; 
respect of the people for women, 
55; their love of liberty, 55, 56; 
invade Rome, 57; their religion, 
58-63 ; prepared to receive the 
Gospel, 64, 65. 

Gnostics, The, 32. 

Gnostic heresy, The, 135, 409; Alex- 
andria predisposed to the, 267. 

Grace, The idea of, obnoxious to 
Aurelius, 119. 

Greece, Missions in, 32. 

Greek Church, The, 265. 

Gregoiy (Thaumaturgus), a disciple 
of Origen, 333 ; his character and 
views, 355. 

Hegesippus, his mental character, 
237 ; attached importance to tra- 
dition, 238. 

Heliogabalus, his reign, 165 ; con- 
founds the religion of the Jews, 
Samaritans, and Christians, 167. 

Heraclas, the disciple of Origen, 344. 

Heresy in Gaul, 257. 

Heretics, Compassion of Ignatius for 
the, 258. 

Hierarchy consolidated at Rome, 
170. 

Hierarchical party, The, Callisthus, 
its leader, 301. 

Hippolytus, Treatise of, 170; the 
first celebrated preacher of the 
West, 361 ; his writings, 363 ; his 
controversy with Callisthus, 364; 
his martyrdom, 366; authenticity 
of the "Philosophoumena," 635- 
640. 



Humiliation of Christ, part of the 
Divine plan, 599. 

Iberia, Missions in, 28 ; cure of 
king's son in, 29. 

Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, 223 ; 
three of the Epistles genuine, 223, 
630-634 ; condemned to death, 
225, 226 ; his first letter to Poly- 
carp, 226 ; his Epistle to the 
Romans, 229 ; to the Ephesians, 
230 ; the victim of Lucian's rail- 
lery, 232. 

India, Missions in, 31. 

Inquiry, Free, advocated, 547. 

Italy, Origin of the Churches in, 40. 

Irenaeus, his character, 252 ; the 
greatest bishop of the second 
century, 253 ; exaggerated the 
importance of oral tradition, 254 ; 
his controversy with Gnosticism, 
254 ; outline of his treatise against 
heresies, 257-259; his compassion 
for the heretics, 258 ; his martyr- 
dom, 259. 

Jews, the, Opposition of, to Chris- 
tianity, 449 ; types of unintelligent 
conservatism, 480 ; confounded 
with Christians, 167 ; unbelief of, 
more culpable than that of the 
pagans, 570. 

Judaeo-Christianity in the Church, 
in new forms, 217. 

Judgment-seat, The Christian before 
the, 86-90. 

Juliana receives Origen, 320. 

Justin Martyr, born of a pagan 
family, 243 ; his conversion, 21, 
246 ; his apology, 107 ; deals 
with the accusations against the 
Christians, 109 ; enters too much 
into detail, 112; his apology to' 
Marcus Aurelius, 127-129 ; at- 
tracted by the austerity of the 
Stoics, 244 ; before the tribunal, 
250; theological views not original, 
251. 

Legio Fulminatrix, Story of the, 

129. 
Leonides, the father of Origen, 284; 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



645 



thrown into prison, 287 ; his 
martyrdom, 288. 

Letters of Ignatius, 223, 630-634. 

Logic, the morality of language, 545. 

Lucian (of Samosata), compared with 
Porphyry, 451 ; his opinions on 
religion, 451 ; hfs acquaintance 
with his age, 454 ; impurity of his 
writings, 455 ; aims to subvert 
greatness, 456; his " Dialogues 
of the Dead," 456 ; "Dialogues 
of the Gods," 457 ; ridicules philo- 
sophy, 463-467 ; his moderation, 
467 ; his "Peregrinus," 468 ; com- 
bines impartiality and injustice, 
469. 

Lyons, the Church of, Origin of, 
41 ; letter of, to the Church of 
Asia Minor, 130; affected by 
Montanism, 255. 

Macrinus, hi? brief reign, 165. 

Mammsea sends for Origen, 303. 

Marcus Aurelius, his character, 1 14 
(see Aurelius). 

Marriage, mixed, Dangers of, 72. 

Martyrdom, Views of Clement on, 
281 ; of Blandina, 132 ; of Fa- 
binus, 182, 183 ; of Hippolytus, 
366 ; of Ignatius, 225, 226 ; of 
Irenaeus, 259 ; of Justin Martyr, 
25 1 ; of Leonides, 288 ; of Origen, 
340 ; of Perpetua, 160 ; of Spera- 
tus, 160 ; of Symphorian, 133. 

Maximin predisposed to violence, 
171 ; persecutes the bishops, 171. 

Melito (of Sardis), his apology, 124 , 
his character and writings, 241, 
242. 

Methodius charges Origen with 
heresy, 357. 

Millenarian controversy, 345. 

Miracles continued in the Church, 
14 ; less frequent, 15 ; wrought 
chiefly on demoniacs, 16-18 ; dif- 
ference between, and magic, 384. 

Missionaries, First, not specially 
trained, 20 ; maligned, 573 ; de- 
fended by Origen, 574. 

Missions, Christian, character of, 
1-24 ; successes ol, 3 ; obstacles 
to, 4. 



Montanism, Appearance of, 136 ; 

affects the Church at Lyons, 255. 
Montanists, Fanaticism of the, 140 ; 

Tertullian belonged to the, 400. 

Narcissus, Bishop of Jerusalem, 
263 ; united with Alexander in 
the bishopric, 264. 

Natural, The religion of nature des- 
troys all that is, 166. 

Natural sequence the divinity of 
Aurelius, 118. 

Neo-Platonism, 521. 

Nicaea, Council of, 25. 

Nicomedia, Christian temple of, 
destroyed by the pagans, 206. 

Novatus, his system, 347. 

Origen lived in an intermediate 
age, 282 ; birth, 283 ; yearning 
for martyrdom, 287 ; refuses to 
worship with Paul, 288 ; gives 
lessons in grammar, 289 ; suc- 
ceeds Clement as catechist, 290 ; 
his thirst for knowledge, 292 ; 
his asceticism, 293, 294 ; mutilates 
his body, 297 ; belongs to the 
liberal party, 301 ; his friendship 
with Ambrose, 304; his exegeti- 
cal labours, 305 ; preaches *at 
Caesarea, 309 ; is consecrated a 
priest, 310 ; excluded from the 
Church of Alexandria, 313 ; his 
behaviour under his trial, 315 ; 
flees to Cappadocia, 320 ; leads 
Beryl back to the Faith, 323 ; 
fitted for writing his great work, 
325 ; his mental qualities, 327 ; 
tendency to idealise, 329 ; con- 
scientious, 330 ; as a master 
and professor, 333 ; his personal 
influence, 335 ; his manner ot 
preaching, 337 ; cast into prison, 
339 ; his death, 340 ; his disciples, 
341 ; charge of heresy, 357. 

Pagan society had no respect for 
human nature, 81. 

Pagans, Ceremonies of the, 191 ; 
the cultivated, 442 ; under Dio- 
clesian, 202 ; Galerius, their re- 
cognised head, 203* 



6 4 6 



THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 



Paganism, Hellenic, founded on 
Fatalism. 462. 

Palestine, The Churches of, favour- 
able to Origen, 315. 

Pamphylus, Bishop of Coesarea, 
defends Origen, 357, 358. 

Pantaenus, his history, 270 ; his 
eloquence, 271. 

Paul (the heretic), Origen refuses to 
worship with, 288. 

" Peregrinus " (of Lucian), 468. 

Perpetua, her martyrdom, 86, 160. 

Persecutions of the second and third 
centuries, their character, 67 ; 
never ceased before Constantine, 
67, 68 ; under Trajan, 98 ; how 
conducted, 102 ; under Severus, 
158 ; under Maximin, 171 ; the 
last general, 200 ; eight distinct, 

Persia, Missions in, 29, 30. 

Pestilence at Carthage, 190 ; at 
Alexandria, 350. 

Philip (the Arabian), at first favour- 
able to Christianity, 175, 325 ; 
never embraced the Faith, 1 76. 

Philosophers, The polemics of the, 

45J. 

" Philosophoumena," On the authen- 
ticity of the, 635, 640. 

Philosophic faculty, The, the gift 
of God, 562. 

Pierius of Alexandria, 351. 

Plato, The doctrines of, and Jesus 
Christ not contrary, 535. 

Platonism considered a preparation 
for Christianity, 247. 

Pliny, Letters between, and Trajan, 
100, 224. 

Polemics of the philosophers, 455. 

Polycarp, Letters of Ignatius to, 
226 ; the disciple of St. John, 
232 ; fitted for the transition 
period, 233 ; his Epistle, 234 ; 
meets Marcion at Rome, 235. 

Polycrates (of Ephesus), 242. 

Porphyry meets with Origen, 299 ; 
his principal objections against 
Christianity, 524. 

Pride, an obstacle to man's restora- 
tion, 610. 

Pothinus before the magistrate, 132. 



Preaching, Origen's manner of, 337. 
Priests, Pagan, deceive the people, 

77- 
Primacy, The, not recognised by 

Ignatius, 259. 
Principles, First, beyond the reason, 

557- 
Proculus cures the Emperor, 140. 
Progress of the Church in Asia, 24 ; 

in Asia Minor, 26. 
Propagation of the Gospel, The 

means employed in, 19. 
Public life, Dangers to the Christian 

in, 72. 

Quadratus one of the first Apolo- 
gists, 236. 

Re-admission into the Church, 181. 

Reason, Province of, 545 ; and 
faith, 549. 

Rebellion, The Christians charged 
with, 152. 

Redemption, The doctrine of, con- 
sidered absurd by Aurelius, 120. 

Revelation, Difference between, and 
the writings which contain it, 559. 

Roman Empire, Position of a Chris- 
tian in the, 69-76. 

Rome, the Church of, Origin of, 
40 ; composed of all classes, 41 ; 
corresponded to the Judaic type, 
238 ; considered Apostolic, 256 ; 
Origen visits, 300, 301. 

Sabellius, 347, 356. 

Saturnin, The heresy of, 135. 

Science and faith, 549. 

Scorn of philosophy, a fatal moral 

symptom, 467. 
Scourges, The Christians charged 

with bringing, upon the empire, 

152. 
Scriptures, Copies of the, rare, 13 ; 

style of, below the requirement of 

a refined taste, 194 ; the authority 

of, 599. "... 

Second century, Christianity in the, 

2 ; corruptions of society in the, 6. 
Sequence, Natural, the sole divinity 

of Aurelius, 118. 
Serapion, Bishop of Antioch, 241. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



647 



Severus at first favourable to the 
Christians, 139 ; changes towards 
them, 140 ; comes under the in- 
fluence of the Egyptian priests, 
141 ; revives persecution, 142. 

Sixtus, Bishop of Rome, 237. 

Smyrna, Persecution severe in, 1 30. 

Society in the second century, 
corrupt, 6 ; its fanaticism, 8. 

Soldier, the Christian, Position of, 
73 ; forbidden the crown ot laurel, 

145. 

Soter, Bishop of Rome, 237. 

Spain, Origin of the Church of, 39. 

Speratus, The martyrdom of, 160. 

Stoicism, antagonistic to Christianity, 
116 ; Roman Pharisaism, 116. 

Suicide, Apostates sometimes com- 
mitted, 93 ; an impious death, 
127. 

Sufferings not a mark of Divine 
anger, 128 ; conformable to the 
will of God, 147 ; cheerfully 
accepted, 155 ; regarded by the 
heathens as a curse, 448. 

Symphorian, Martyrdom of, 133. 

Syrian Princes, The, 137. 

Tavern-keeper decreed to give way 
to Christian worshippers, 169. 

Tertullian, his address to the martyrs, 
138; condemns "fleeing from 
persecution," 143 ; forbids to the 
Christian soldier the crown of 
laurel, 145 ; his treatise against 
the Gnostics, 146 ; defects of his 
writings, 149 ; his Apology, 150 ; 
his letter to Scapula, 163 ; his 
great influence, 375 ; his conver- 
sion, 379 ; moderation to him 
impossible, 381 ; his style, 382 ; 
becomes a priest, 383 ; his 
writings, 384-409 ; his modes of 
argument, 389 ; his power of 
irony, 393 ; his temptation to the 



indulgence of passion, 394 ; a 
Montanist, 400 ; a materialist, 
41 1 ; his polemical writings, 409 ; 
contrasted with Origen, 413. 

Theognostus, catechist at Alexan- 
dria, 351. 

Theonas, Bishop of Alexandria, 352. 

Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, 240. 

Tradition regarded as the rule of 
Faith, 258. 

Tradiiores, 209. 

Trajan, Persecution under, 98 ; his 
character, 99 ; letters between, 
and Pliny, 100, 10 1. 

Trial, benefits of, Cyprian on, 193. 

Tribunal, The Christian before the, 
86-90 ; Pothinus before the, 132 ; 
Justin Martyr before the, 250. 

Tyranny, the expression of a two- 
fold meanness, 79. 

Valentine, Heresy of, 135. 

Valerian at first favourable to the 
Christians, 196 ; decrees persecu- 
tion, 196. 

Vettius Epagathus defends his breth- 
ren, 131. 

Victor, Bishop of Rome, 237-368. 

Visions common with the martyrs, 
S3- 

War, Position of the Christian sol- 
dier in, 73. 

Western Church different from the 
Eastern, 43, 360. 

Western Gaul receives the Gospel, 

51. 

Will, The, important in belief, 551. 

Withdrawing from common life, 

The Christians charged with, 154. 

Word, The, wisdom and reason, 532. 

Zephyrinus, his character, 369 ; 

the tool of Callisthus, 369. 
Zoroaster, Teaching of, 30. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



QUOTED OR REFERRED TO, AND OF THE 



SUBJECTS OF QUOTATION OR REFERENCE. 



Amedee, Thierry. "Histoiredes 
Gaulois." On the religion of Gaul, 
46, 52. 

Apuleius. "Metamorph." On 
Neo-Platonism, 521. 

Arnobius. "Adv. Gentes." His 
reply to the charges against the 
Christians, 606 (Ibid.) Degrades 
human nature, 607. The idea 
of God not the prerogative of 
man, 608. Exalts only those divine 
attributes that are incommunicable, 
609. The existence of evil in the 
world, 611. Man at the foot of 
the scale of being, 612. The arts 
not heavenly gifts, 613. His pa- 
rody of Plato's "Cave," 614. The 
world makes man what he is, 615. 
The earth no gainer by the exis- 
tence of man, 616. Humanity 
dishonours the world by its crimes, 
617. The work of Christ not a 
restoration, but a new creation, 
619. Man has no power to re- 
cognise the Divine, 620. Relies 
on the testimony of the senses, 

623. He destroys the beautiful 
simplicity of the Gospel miracles, 

624. Three proofs for the reality 
of the miracles, 625. 

Augustine. "Epist." On the 
immediate successor of Peter, 219. 
— " Serm." Cyprian employs his 
eloquence in defence of the faith, 
420. — ' ' Epist. " Porphyry's prin- 
cipal objections against Christian- 
ity, 525. 



Aurelius, Marcus. " Medita- 
tions." Portrait of Antoninus 
Pius, 106. Acquiescence in the 
decrees of destiny, 1 18, 1 19. Stoic- 
ism, 120. Self-satisfaction, 1 21. 
Depreciates the conscience, 122. 

Baur. 0~\ the question of a second 
Celsus, 477. The fragments of 
Celsus' writings, 478. The inten- 
tion of Philostratus in writing the 
"Life of Apollonius of Tyana," 
512. On the polemics of Porphyry 
against Christianity, 524. On the 
genuineness of the Epistles of Igna- 
tius, 634. Ascribes the ' ' Philo- 
sophoumena" to Caius, 637. 

Bede. "History." On the early 
history of Christianity in England, 

54- 
Bunsen. "GottinderGeschichte." 
On the love of liberty among the 
Gauls, 56. — "Ignatius und seine 
Zeit." On the integrity of Poly- 
carp's letter to the Philippians, 
233. Bishops of towns adjacent 
to Rome had seats in the council 
of the Central Church, 361. The 
martyrdom of Hippolytus, 366. 
— "Hippolytus." Ascribes "Let- 
ter of Diognetes" to Marcion, 592. 
— " Antenicaena. " On the genu- 
ineness of the Epistles of Igna- 
tius, 631 (Note B). 



Cesar. "De Bell. Gall." 
religion of the Gauls, 59. 



On the 






INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



649 



CHRYSOSTOM. ' ' Oratio quod Chris- 
tusDeus." On the spread of Chris- 
tianity to Britain, 53. 

Clement of Alexandria. "Pro- 
trept." On the universal corrup- 
tion of society, 6. — "Psedagog." 
On the illumination of the soul, II. 
— "Stromata." On the teaching 
of Pantsenus, 271 (Ibid.) On ad- 
apting teaching to the condition of 
the hearers, 275 (Ibid.) Scorns 
beauty of language, 276 (Ibid.) 
Philosophy a creature of Divine 
providence, 280 (Ibid.) His mode- 
rate views on martyrdom, 281. 
The Divine in us the peculiar cha- 
racter of the moral creature, 541. 
— " Protrept." The music of the 
universe, 542. — "Strom." The 
province of reason, 545 (Ibid.) 
Science and Christianity, 546 
(Ibid.) Mental culture, 547 (Ibid.) 
First causes above demonstra- 
tion, 548 (Ibid.) Intuition of faith 
not merely passive, 551 (Ibid.) 
The province of the will, 551 
(Ibid.) Faith has a moral cause, 
552 (Ibid. ) Reason and faith mani- 
festations of the same moral 
power, 554 (Ibid.) First prin- 
ciples beyond the reach of reason- 
ing, 557. — " Protrept." Dis- 
tinguishes between revelation and 
the writings that contain it, 559. 
— "Strom." Philosophy a fainter 
expression of the Word than pro- 
phecy, 562. 

Cruice (M. l'Abbe). "Philoso- 
phoumena." Ascribes the "Phi- 
losophoumena" to Tertullian, 637, 
638, 640. 

Cureton. On the genuineness of 
the Epistles of Ignatius, 631 
(Note B). 

Cyprian. "AdDonat." Discus- 
sions in the open air, 23. — " Epist. " 
On the imprisonment of the 
martyrs, 81, 82. — "De Lapsis." 
On the readiness of Christians to 
recant, 91 (Ibid.) On the remorse 
of the apostates, 93 (Ibid.) The 
Libellatici considered apostates, 



93. On the courage of the con- 
fessors, 94. — "Epist." On the 
re-admission of apostates into the 
Church, 181 (Ibid.) Extols the 
courage of the confessors, 186, 
188.— "Ad Demetr." On the 
persecution in Carthage, 190 
(Ibid.) Pictures the crimes of the 
Pagans, 191 (Ibid.) Appeal to the 
conscience of the Pagans, 192. — 
"De Mortal." Warns against 
the fear of death, 193. — " De 
Opere et Eleemos." On the ex- 
piatory virtue of liberality, 195. 
— " De Gratia Dei." On his life 
as a Pagan, 416. His joy at con- 
version, 419. — " Epist." His 
generosity, 425 (Ibid.) Does no- 
thing without the consent of the 
people, 427 (Ibid.) His affection 
for his flock, 428 (Ibid.) Fleeing 
from persecution sometimes a 
duty, 429 (Ibid.) Address to 
Christians in peril, 431 (Ibid.) 
Resolved to die in his bishopric, 
435, 436. 

Daille. Questions the genuineness 
of the seven Epistles of Ignatius, 
630 (Note B). 

Dorner. "Die Person Christi." 
The " Letter to Diognetes" as- 
cribed to Quadratus, 592. 

Etjsebius " H. E." On the early 
missionaries, 20 (Ibid.) On the 
scruples of the Christian soldier, 
73 (Ibid.) On the disabilities 
of the Christians, 77, 78. On the 
crowd being the sole executive in 
the condemnation of the Chris- 
tian, 80. On the apostates be- 
longing to the higher class, 180. 
On the severity of the persecu- 
tions, 185. On the opposition 
of the Pagan party, 205. The 
School of the Catechists, 269. 
The teaching of Origen modelled 
on that of Pantsenus, 270. On 
the mission of Pantsenus, 271. 
On the birth and position of Ori- 
gen, 283. Origen's seeking a hid- 



42 



650 



THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 



den sense in Scripture, 285 . Ori- 
gen, a pupil of Pantaenus and 
Clement, 286. Origen's exhorta- 
tion to his lather in prison, 287. 
His thirst for knowledge, 293-295. 
His life agreeing with his teaching, 
297. Becomes literally a eunuch, 
297. Demetrius' jealousy of Ori- 
gen, 311. His Commentary on 
the Song of Songs, 322. His 
Commentary on St. John, 322. 
Leads back Beryl to the Faith, 
324. Heretics, beforere-admission, 
required to make a full statement 
of former errors, 342. Dionysius' 
advice to his elder to read all that 
comes in his way, 344. On the 
Millenarian controversy, 345. 
Dionysius' opposition to the as- 
sumptions of the hierarchy, 347. 
On the spuriousness of Clement's 
Second Epistle, 630 (Note A). 

Fabricius. "Lux Salutaris." Con- 
version in masses, 28. 

Gieseler. "Church History." On 
the legendary account of the 
Theban legion, 202. 

Gregory Nazianzen. "Orat." 
Cyprian's contempt for the world, 
419. 

Gregory Thaumaturgus. His 
admiration for Origen, 333. Ori- 
gen's manner of teaching, 335. 
Admiration and love of his dis- 
ciples for Origen, 336. 

Gregory of Tours. "Hist. Fran- 
ciae." On the Churches of Gaul, 
252. 

Helgenfeld. " Apostoliche Vas- 
ter." On the date of Clement's 
Epistle to the Corinthians, 629 
(Note A), 634. 

HiERONYMUS. Porphyry seeks to 
destroy the credibility of Scrip- 
ture, 525. Lays stress upon the 
dispute between St. Peter and St. 
Paul, 525. 

Hippolytus. "Philos." Relies 
solely on the power of persuasion, 



364. The life and character of 
Callisthus, 370-2 (Ibid.) Reason, 
the eye of the spirit, 588. 
Hozfele. "Prolegom." On the 
date of Clement's Epistle to the 
Corinthians, 629 (Note A). 

Ignatius. " Ad Polycarp. " The 
militant state of the martyr- 
Church, 227.— "Ad Roman." A 
fanatic desire for martyrdom, 229. 

Iren^eus. " Contra Haeres. " On 
the success of missions, 3 (Ibid.) 
Continuance of miracles, 14. — ■ 
" Adver. Haeres." On the genu- 
ineness of Polycarp's Letter to the 
Philippians, 233. — "Contra Hae- 
res." The Church of Rome an 
apostolic Church, 256 (Ibid. ) Pic- 
ture of false teachers, 257 (Ibid.) 
His compassion for the heretics, 
258. 

Jerome. "De Viris Illustr." On 
the journey of Irenaeus into Gaul, 
255. The distress of Origen, 288. 
The condemnation of Origen pub- 
lished by letter, 315. Pierius 
considered a second Origen, 351. 
Methodius' writings, 357. On 
the works of St. Hippolytus, 361. 
The connection of Hippolytus 
with Origen, 362. Caius, the 
first to suggest doubt as to the 
Epistle to the Hebrews being 
written by St. Paul, 367. The 
barbarous style and puerilities of 
Victor, 368. Birth of Tertullian, 
375. — "De Baptismo." In youth 
he acquired Greek culture, 377. 
Made the gravest questions mat- 
ter of jest, .377. — " De Viris Il- 
lustr." Becomes the apostle of 
Montanism, 397-401.— "In Jo- 
hann." Cyprian's first impres- 
sions received from reading the 
Prophet Jonah, 417. — " De Viris 
Illustr." Style of Arnobius, 439. 

Justin Martyr. " Dial, cum 
Tryph." On the remarkable suc- 
cesses of Christian missions, 3 
(Ibid.) On his " conversion, 21 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



651 



(Ibid.) On public discussions, 22. 
— " Apology." On the dangers of 
a mixed marriage, 72. On the 
accusations against the Christians, 

109. On the charge of rebellion, 

1 10. — " Dial, cum Tryph. " His 
conversion, 243-246. Platonism, 
a preparation of the heathen world 
for Christianity, 247. — "Apolo- 
gia." The Word, wisdom and 
reason, 532 (Ibid.) The doctrines of 
Plato and Jesus Christ not con- 
trary, 535 (Ibid.) Greece and 
her philosophers, 536. Analogy 
between Pagan fables and Gospel 
history, 537. 

Lampriditjs. "InHeliog." On 
the religious tendencies of Helio- 
gabalus, 167-170. On the man- 
ner of the elections of priests — a 
. pattern in the election of magis- 
trates, 169. 

Lucian. "Dialogues of the Dead." 
His raillery of the Grecian heroes, 
457-461. Aims a blow at all 
religion, 461. Ridicules philo- 
sophy, 463-466. — " Peregrinus. " 
The blind credulity of the Chris- 
tians, 470. His scorn for Chris- 
tian compassion, 472. Parody of 
martyrdom, 475. 

Lenain de Tillemont. " Me- 
moires." On conversion in masses, 
28. Justin, a priest of the 
Church of Rome, 248. Dionysius, 
the representative of Christian 
liberty, 343. The works of Hip- 
poly tus, 361. 

Lenormant (Charles). Ascribes 
the " Philosouphoumena " to Ori- 
gen, 636. 

Lerius (Vincent de). "Corn- 
monitor." His judgment of 
the character of Tertullian, 
412. 

Marcellinus. On the priesthood 

among the Druids, 49. 
Martin (Henri). "Histoirede 

France." On the ancient religion 

of Gaul, 48-50. 



Miller. Ascribes the "Philoso- 
phoumena" to Origen, 636. 

Milman. On the reign of Helio- 
gabalus, 167-201. 

Minutius Felix. "Octavius." 
Pagan scepticism, 443 (Ibid.) Uti- 
litarian apology for paganism. 
(Ibid.) God forsaken, 447. The 
immortality of the individual 
shocks the Pagan, 447. Con- 
sidered absurd, 448. 

Mosheim. "Com. rerum Christ, 
ante Const." On the miracle of 
the Legion, 130 (Ibid. ) On Philip's 
conversion, 176 (Ibid.) On the 
Theban legion, 202. 

Neander. "Church Hist." He 
idealises Marcus Aurelius, 122. 
On the decree of Marcus Aurelius, 
123. — " Antignosticus." On the 
date of the books of the " Stro- 
mata."—" Church History." On 
the question of a second Celsus, 
476, 477 (Ibid.) The intention of 
Philostratus in writing the " Life 
of Apollonius of Tyana," 512. 

Origen. On the continuance of 



miracles, I' 



Contra Celsum. 



On the early missionaries, 20. — 
"Ad Martyr." On the superi- 
ority of martyrdom to all other 
deaths, 172-175. — " In Johann," 
On the decline of piety in the 
Church, 178.— "In Gen. Horn." 
His literal interpretation of the 
precept, "Take no thought for 
the morrow," 295, 296. — "In 
Matthseum. " Scandalised by what 
transpired at Rome, 302. — "In 
Johann." His reply to the accu- 
sation of writing too many books, 
316 (Ibid.) Recovers compo- 
sure of mind, 317. — " Epist. ad 
Amic." Entertains no hatred to- 
wards his enemies, 318. — " De 
Oratione. " Evidence of his think- 
ing upon his persecutions, in his 
writings, 320. The example of 
Job, 321. — "In Johann." His 
sublime conception «f '"Vm'stian 



65= 



THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 



knowledge, 332.— "Contra Cel- 
sum." His readiness for persecu- 
tion, 338. "InEzechiel." Love, 
an agony, 340 (Ibid. ) The question 
regarding a second Celsus, 476, 
477. Celsus' distortion of facts, 
478 (Ibid.) Celsus confounds the 
Canonical Gospels with the Apo- 
cryphal Gospels, 481; (Ibid.) de- 
grades the Virgin Mary, 482 ; the 
Divinity of Christ subject of 
scorn, 483 ; (Ibid.) describes 
the Passion, 484 (Ibid.); Christ's 
want of success, 485 ; seeks to 
destroy faith in the resurrection, 
485 ; compares Moses with the 
legislators of Greece, 488 ; his 
account of the Creation, 489. 
The Christians dangerous inno- 
vators, 490. The Christians be- 
long to no nation, 491. Celsus 
parodies the apostles' preaching, 
492 ; reproaches the Christian 
religion with showing a predilec- 
tion for men of vicious lives, 492 ; 
the style of Scripture below the 
requirements of a refined taste, 
494 ; the Christian doctrine with- 
out originality, 496 ; looks upon 
Jesus Christ as an impostor, 497 ; 
the doctrine of demons, 498-500. 
Celsus rejects the idea of moral 
evil and the Fall, 500-502 ; the 
theory of redemption, 502 ; the 
miracles of Christ, 504. Human 
nature, 505-508. Negation of 
freedom, 508. — "In Cantic." 
The Divine word slumbers in the 
heart of the unbelievers, 567. — 
" Contra Celsum." The unbelief 
of the Jews, 569-570 (Ibid.) 
The historic claims of the Old 
Testament, 571 (Ibid.) The 
glory of the new religion that it is 
mindful of those who have no 
earthly heritage, 572 (Ibid.) 
Answer to charge of leading 
astray, 574 (Ibid. ) Faith courts in- 
quiry, 577, 578 (Ibid.) Chris- 
tianity meets the true needs of 
the soul, 579 (Ibid.) Exalts 
the dignity of human nature, 



583 (Ibid.) Difference between 
Christian miracles and ma?ic, 
384. 

Otto. "In Opera Justin." Attri- 
butes the Letter of Diognetes to 
Justin, 591. 

Ozanam. " The Germans and the 
Franks. " — On the love of liberty 
among the Gauls, 56 (Ibid.) 
Worship of nature the basis of 
religion among the Gauls, 59 
(Ibid.) The mythology of the 
Germans, 64. 

Pearson. On the genuineness of 
the Epistles of Ignatius, 631 (Note 
B). 

Philostrattjs. " Life of Apollo- 
nius of Tyana." The doctrine 
and disciples of Apollonius, 513. 
Imitates Christ, 514. The ana- 
logies between Apollonius and 
Christ palpable, 515. Apollonius 
simply a magician, 518. His 
doctrine contains nothing original, 

519. 

Photius. " Codex." Origen de- 
posed by the Synod, 314. The 
obligations of Dionysius to Ori- 
gen, 350. Methodius' writings, 
357. On the authorship of the 
" Philosophoumena," 637, 639, 
640. 

Planck. "Studien und Kritik." 
On scorn of Philosophy a fatal 
moral symptom, 467. Lucian 
was acquainted with the Holy 
Scriptures, 468. 

Pliny. "Epist." On the pro- 
gress of the Christian religion, 98, 
IOO (Ibid.) On Christianity 
being a crime, IOI. How the 
persecutions were conducted, 102. 

Pontius. "Vita Cypr." Cseci- 
lius takes Cyprian into his family, 
418 (Ibid.) Cyprian's appear- 
ance, 420, 424 -(Ibid.) His 
maturity of character in early life, 
423 (Ibid.) The sympathy of 
the people when he was before 
the tribunal, 437. 

Porphyry. "Epist. ad. Marcell." 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



653 



Clings to the religion of his 
father, 521. 

Reynaud. "Druidisme." On the 
ancient religion of Gaul, 47. 

Redepexxixg. "Origen." The 
Philosophers of Alexandria, 267. 
The School of the Catechists, 269, 
270. Origen leads Beryl to for- 
sake his error, 324. 

Renax. The Fragments of Melito's 
Apology, 531. 

Rothe. On the genuineness of the 
Epistles of St. Ignatius, 631 
(Note B). 

Routh. "Reliq. Sacrae." On 
Adrian's letter to Fondanus, 104 
(Ibid.) On the persecution of 
the Jews, 105. On the steadfast- 
ness of the Christians under per- 
secution, 131. Dionysius' love 
of free discussion, 344. The 
eloquence of Theognostus, 351. 
The martyrdom of Pierius, 352. 

Salviaxi. "De Gubern. Dei." 

On the respect for women among 

the Gauls, 55. 
Semisch. "Justin der Martyrer." 

Letter to Diognetes not the work 

of Justin Martyr, 591. 

Tacitus. "Germania." On the 
religion of the Gauls, 59. 

Theodoret. ' ' Historyof Heresies. " 
Borrowed largely from the "Phi- 
losophoumena," 635, 640. 

Tschirxer. "Gesch. der Apol." 
On the calumnies against the 
Christians, 441. Christianity meets 
with the most deadly opposition 
from the Jew, 449. 

Tertullian. On the success of 
Christian missions, 3. — " Adv. 
Judaeos." On the eloquence of 
the martyr's death. — " Dial, cum 
Tryph." On continuance of mi- 
racles, 10. "Ad. Scap.," 
Disease cured by prayer and 
anointing with oil, 14. — " De 
Idol." On the position of 
the Christian in the Roman 



Empire, 69-71 (Ibid.) On what 
is due to Caesar, 75. — " Apol." 
On the fury of the multitude, 
77 (Ibid.) Christians con- 
demned without inquiry, 87. — 
"Ad Martyr." Encouraging the 
confessors, 139. — " De Fuga in 
Persec." On buying off a con- 
fessor with money, 143 (Ibid.) 
On seeking safety by flight, 
144, 145. — "Contra Gnost." On 
suffering for truth, 147, 148. — 
"Apol." On luxury and ambi- 
tion, 150 (Ibid.) The true 
causes of war, famine, and pesti- 
lence, 152, 153. On the charge 
of Christians being useless mem- 
bers of society, 154. On suffer- 
ings cheerfully accepted, 155, 
156.— "Ad Scap." On Chris- 
tian steadfastness in persecution, 
163. Refutes the charges against 
the Christians, 164, 165. — "De 
Prescript." On Clement the im- 
mediate successor of St. Peter, 
219. — "De Pcenit." On the cor- 
rupting influence of idolatry, 378. 
— " Testimonium Animae." Ter- 
tullian's secret uneasiness, 379. 
— " De Patientia." His impa- 
tience, 381. — "Ad Uxor."^ Can- 
not understand the desire for 
children, 384. — "Ad Martyr." 
Congratulates the martyrs on 
escaping the influences of pagan 
society, 385. — " De Spectac." 
The delights of Christians, 386 
(Ibid.) The speedy return of 
Christ, 387 (Ibid.) Joy in 
anticipating the doom of his 
enemies, 388. — "Apologia." 
His mockery of the Olympian 
gods, 390. — " De Praescript." 
His intolerance of heresy, 392. 
— "De Pcenitentia. " His inward 
struggles, 393. — " De Patientia." 
Eulogium on patience, 394, 
395. — " De Cultu Femin." Con- 
demns adornment, 403. — " De 
Pudicitia." Adultery the worst 
apostasy, 404. — "Adv. Marc." 
His asperity towards the Greek 



^54 



THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. 



philosophers, 406. — " De Carne ture, 599 (Ibid.) The humilia- 
Christi." The humanity of Christ tions of Christ formed part of the 
no mere semblance, 408. — "Adv. Divine plan, 599 (Ibid.) Chris- 
Marc." Magnifies the beauty of tianity alone has claim to man's 
the visible universe, 410. — " De allegiance, 601. 
Resur. Carnis." The material 

and higher world one, 41 1. Valerius Maximus. Defines 

Contrasted with Origen, 413. — ■ Druidism a new Pythagorism, 

" De Testim. Animse." Appeal 5.0. 

should be made to conscience Vaucher (M. Pierre). On the 

before the Scripture, 596-598. — genuineness of the Epistles of 

"Apol." The authority of Scrip- Ignatius, 631. 



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